Fraggs Magazine - 003 - March 2011

fraggs Magazine

Mortal Kombat

Preview, Reflections, and Fatalities Top 10 Arcades You Need To Visit RIFT: Is It Time to Return to Azeroth, Yet?

003 April 2011

Gaming | Computers | Technology

Magazine Fraggs in Transition for the Gamers

Editor in Chief Tim Taylor

Welcome back, readers. We have a feature-rich issue this month, with lots of original content, but I’m certain you will get to that shortly.

Assistant Editor Sammi Barton

What I really wanted to focus on in the letter this month is the fact that, as I’m sure many of you already know, Fraggs Magazine’s digital copy is now pay what you want. This decision wasn’t made lightly or without some careful consideration, but, in the end, we wanted to do what was best for our audience: gamers.

Writing Staff Bryan Edge Ethan Wellman Aaron Polans Nick Vaka Jeri Klein Adam Wilkins

We know that some people prefer paper copies, and those are still available, so have no fear there. On the other hand, we know that it’s not always easy for all of us to find some disposable income each month. We didn’t want you to miss out on having the magazine just because of that, so we decided to change things up. If you have something extra you would like to contribute when you pick up the magazine, it is much appreciated. If you are a strapped or just want to take a look and see what is inside, feel free to just grab a copy for nada and we sincerely hope you enjoy the read.

Fraggs is made by gamers, independent from any other company, to help give gaming readers a new magazine just for them. In the spirit of that, read on, whether it be paper or digital, and I hope you enjoy it.

Tim Taylor Editor

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Tim Taylor - Editor Currently Playing: League of Legends, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 Despite being a Systems Engineer and comic book nerd, Tim still manages to spend far, far too much time playing fighting games. We are certain an intervention is in the near future.

Sammi Barton - Assistant Editor Currently Playing: Crysis 2 Although owning an NES since age four, Sammi was not fully introduced to video games until 2006. Since then she has become a full-fledged nerd with a love for comics, zombies, FPS games and countless hours on PS Home.

Michael Ireland - Public Relations / Advertising Manager Currently Playing: Costume Quest When you meet people in the industry the first question that’s usually asked is “How did you get your start in the industry?” When he tells people that he started as a PR rep for the Nokia NGage, sadness instantly fills the room.

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April 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEPARTMENTS Debut Fight Nation Top Ten Fraggs Bag 411: F2P MMOs Interview: Chris Mahnken

REVIEWS 06 07 08 26 24 18

FEATURES Gamers Belong in Arcades DOS Games on WinPhone7 Mortal Kombat 9 RIFT Hoarders

10 11 14 20 12

Dragon Age II Total War: Shogun 2 Crysis 2 Homefront Gemini Rue You Don’t Know Jack Fate of the World Battle: Los Angeles Slam Bolt Scrappers Beyond Good & Evil HD Civilization 5: Polynesia DaVinci Disappearance MvC3: Jill & Shuma Gorath Raptor Gaming M3X Razer Ferox Sonar Championship 5.1 Chameleon X-1

30 31 32 33 34 35 35 36 36 36 37 37 37 38 39 40 41

Page 14 Page 33

Page 32 Page 36

DEBUT A Quick Look at This Month’s Announced Games

WHITE KNIGHT CHRONICLES 2 - PS3 - Fall 2011

MTG: DUELS OF THE PLANESWALKERS 2012 - PC, PS3, 360 - Summer 2011

RESIDENT EVIL: OPERATION RACOON CITY - Xbox 360, PS3 - Winter 2011

SPIDER-MAN: EDGE OF TIME - Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, DS/3DS - Fall 2011

FIGHT NATION There have been a lot of developments this month, fighting fans. So much to look forward to and so much to consider, so let’s get right down to it.

MvC3 saw the DLC releases of Jill Valentine and Shuma-Gorath, as well as some new costumes and Shadow Mode.

Starting off light, Shadow Mode is an outstanding idea that takes the typical play-styles from some of Capcom’s staff and adds them to the game as AI opponents for you to play against. It’s really quite a revolutionary step, though the opponents released thus far do leave a bit to be desired for anyone over a beginner-medium level. I am looking forward to additions to the Shadow Mode lineup in the future, hopefully bringing more challenging players with them.

Imagine being able to hone your skills against the AI of a pro player… there is certainly both benefit and great interest in seeing that come to fruition.

The two new character additions are welcomed, though they are both relatively minor-title characters. Their play-styles are very unique, and can easily be slotted into teams that just couldn’t quite get the right balance before. Jill is fast and rather complex in her inputs. Shuma is basically the opposite, being visually confusing, but rather slow in the execution of his more useful moves.

However, just like any character in MvC3, they are each broken in their own ways and can certainly be abused to your benefit.

Mortal Kombat 9 saw a demo added to the PlayStation Network and it’s definitely an anticipated title. It has been quite some time since a new Mortal Kombat has been released, but it still seems relatively in question whether this will be the MK return to put it back on the map the way Street Fighter 4 did for Capcom’s franchise. Mortal Kombat is typically viewed as a “western” fighter, past titles employing a different button layout, including things like a dedicated button to block and another to run. To be

honest, it has been a long time since I was invested or even excited about a Mortal Kombat game. In fact, the last MK game I’d even consider myself moderately adept at would be Mortal Kombat 2, but who is counting, right? Either way, I’m interested to see how it pans out. The resurrection of an older title isn’t something that’s easily done, but here’s hoping.

Evil Ryu has been released on SSF4:AE machines in arcades and Oni Akuma is soon to follow. It seems that past all of Ono’s trolling, SSF4: AE has finally been announced for consoles. Coming to us July 7th for 15 dollars (DLC if you have SSF4, apparently much more for full retail), we all now have that to look forward to. I say that only slightly sarcastically, but I have good reason for my sarcasm.

I can’t say I’m not concerned to some degree by the choices to include Evil Ryu and Oni Akuma. It’s undeniable to state that certain characters have more of a … shall we say, popular accessibility to them. Go online and count the number of Ryu players you face vs. how many Gen players you fight. How many Ken players do you get matched up with before you find a Vega (Claw)? If you’ve spent any significant period of time playing online, you know the answer; Ryu, Ken, and a few others are heavily favored by the typical online community. Now take that and multiply it by ten. That’s how many Evil Ryu players you will see. I shudder to think how Oni Akuma may even dwarf that number. Don’t even get me started on the twins. The glass cannon, flashy, big damage characters are frequently favored by casual players, but only mastered by some hardcore players. This fact will end up causing a glut of these two characters online, which is never particularly fun. On top of that, the primary method of play, as well as practice, for the majority of fighting game players is online or vs. games played on a console.

Anyway, my point is this; why not Urien, Rolento, Alex, Hugo, or any other? Street Fighter, as a franchise, has a vast and rich collection of characters behind it. I don’t understand why the choice went to characters that would obviously be favored far more by the casual gamer and less by the invested gamer. Even past that, does SSF4 really need more Shotos? Again, I’m sure Capcom has their reasons, but I’m just unable to grasp them.

Street Fighter X Tekken has released its

first 10 characters. SF gives us Ken, Ryu, Chun, Abel, and Guile. Tekken offers up Bob, Marduk, King, Kazuya, and Nina.. I must admit, it looks really interesting, but mostly like SSF4 plus Tekken Tag in play style. This is not a bad thing at all. I have high hopes for this game, as they are both franchises I love and have played for years. I like that it seems more SSF4 than Tekken in that I don’t see a ton of kicking people on the ground and pounding them into walls, both things that turned me off from recent Tekken releases. It is, however, still early, and time will tell on this one.

Before I run out of room this month, I wanted to throw out some suggestions for those of you that are anywhere from mildly interested to absolutely rabid about the fighting game scene. No matter what game you play, in the past few months, live streams and recorded video has seriously permeated the internet. It doesn’t matter if you love Tekken, MvC3, SSF4, BlazBlue, or any other fighting game, there is a stream for it somewhere. Get online and watch combo videos, go and find some streams, either live or recorded. Watch how people far, far better than you or I play the game and prepare to have your mind blown. You can play with your friends all day, but if you want to get better, watch streams, support the scene by going to tournaments, and play better players.

This is the way you get to be competitive, as well as the way you improve your overall game. Now, go out there and find someone to put on blast.

TOP 10 TOP 10 ARCADES STILL IN BUSINESS

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Title Luna City: Linden, VA Don't let the picture fool you, this impressive, black-lit retrocade is not just down your street collecting your quarters.

This is the private collection of Peter Hirschberg. Why'd I list it here? If you ask him nicely, he may invite you over to play on his huge collection of retro arcade machines.

7 Casino Arcade: Santa Cruz Sprawling between 2 buildings on Santa Cruz's famous boardwalk, this place plays host to not only new fighting, simulator, and shooting games, but also a fair collection of classic arcade titles. This is the first and only arcade I've had the chance to play Atari's vector-based Star Wars arcade game.

APAM: McLean, IL More than just a simple arcade, America's Playable Arcade Museum is touted as a playable museum. Their mission is to recreate the overwhelming euphoria felt when entering an arcade in the early 1980s. Along with carrying the classic staples of the era, they also feature exhibits of prototypes and ultra rare machines.

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8 Klassic Arcade: Gobles, MI This place has a massive collection of pinball machines from the 1960s through today.

They also have an impressive array of retro video games and let you play all day long for a $5 cover charge! To help get you in the retro spirit, KA also sells an assortment of classic, glass bottle sodas.

5 MPA: Manitou Springs, CO

1984: Springfield, MO 1984 sells itself as a classic gaming museum, and seldom has a distinction been so well suited.

1984's collection of old-school arcade classics are at your disposal for a mere $5. Pinball is 25 cents per play, but can you really complain? They've also got 2 scoreboards for local record holders.

Manitou Penny Arcade is spread out between 5 buildings along the streets of Manitou Springs.

The massive collection of new and retro arcade games is a must see for any serious player.

It also features antique amusements from the early 20th century still open for play at the original 5 and 10 cent prices!

3

4 Game Galaxy: Nashville, TN Another heavy hitter, Game Galaxy is not only one of the bigger arcades in the country, but also one of the few still getting recent arcade titles such as Street Fighter 4, and the latest edition of Tekken 6: Bloodline Rebellion. They also sell arcade-cabinets along with new and vintage consoles.

2

Ground Kontrol: Portland Ground Kontrol features classics from the 1970s through 1990s.

While not the biggest venue on this list with only around 90 machines, it's by far the best known. GK was recently awarded a $25,000 prize in Stride Gum's “Save the Arcades 2” campaign for their preservation efforts.

Definitely worth seeing.

FunSpot: Lanconia, NH The American Classic Arcade Museum is the single-largest arcade in the world. Almost 350 different games occupy the grounds, all pre-dating the socalled “violent games era”.

ACAM is a non-profit dedicated to preserving the history of coinop gaming. It was also featured in the documentary “The King of Kong”.

1

Galloping Ghost: Brookfield, IL Galloping Ghost is the second largest arcade in the US, weighing in at almost 200 individual machines. It's a great venue with tons of games, and the machines are all set to free-play. $15 lets you game until 2am!

How did this place gain its spot as number 1 on our list? This arcade is actually developing their own indie-fighting game on location: Dark Presence, a digitized-graphics fighter in the vein of Mortal Kombat. All the video for each character was shot in 1080P, making this the largest data-content game ever made. Even better, Dr. Philip Ahn, who played Shang Tsung in MK2, has been seen playing games here!

Gamers Belong in Arcades Arcades hit their heyday quite a while back, as they were once busy establishments full of little gamers. Those of us who are old enough can remember getting limited allowances from our parents to go waste a few hours, while giving them a break from our hyperactive selves. I recall palming half of a roll of quarters that my parents allotted me, running into the arcade in the mall, and pumping sweaty coin after sweaty coin into Tekken, Street Fighter 2, Time Warriors, and many more mysterious, black cabinets with cutting-edge graphics and stunning sound.

They used to be a place where friends would gather, where you could test your skills against strangers (and in zero-lag environments). You could go there and watch people play, you could learn new strategies, new attacks, and new techniques. If you did well, people would crowd around, watch you play, and hope to pick up on those very things. There was nothing quite like the exhilaration of being the focus of attention, the person people watched with a fervour, as they attempted to detect your weaknesses and called out “I got next,” and put their quarter on the cabinet’s screen.

Unfortunately, with the advent of highlycapable gaming consoles, people became lazy and complacent with their gaming.

Instead of going to the arcade and dropping twenty well-spent dollars, we opted to stay home on the couch. In response, arcades have been through a significant decline, with only a handful still able to keep their doors open in recent years.

However, gaming has begun a new era of prolific acceptance. People are no longer so generally divided into gamer and… well, not gamer. We are no longer a small group of nerdy kids who enjoy playing video games, but now there are significant groups of all different types of gamers; girl gamers, gay gamers, hardcore gamers, casual gamers; the list goes on.

Indeed, we are expanding the definition to

the point that we are all just people again.

Unfortunately, this is spawning unnecessary competition about what makes a gamer a gamer, but that’s a topic for another day. For now, suffice it to say that there are more people playing video games today than I would have dreamed imaginable fifteen years ago.

This is an important aspect to note, as it has the potential to reintroduce arcades, perhaps even to help bring them back to the place of prominence they once held for some of us. Sure, it’s fun to get online and play games with people across the nation, or even the world. But there are limiting factors today; lag, cheaters, glitchers, and the inevitable fourteen-year -old kid screaming profanity in your ear.

Arcades are in a precarious state at the moment. Some incredible arcades have gone under recently. The Chinatown Fair in New York closed its doors, as did Arcade Infinity in SoCal. These were long-running arcades that will be sorely missed, I’m afraid. At the same time, SoCal did see the opening of Round 1, part of a Japanese chain of arcades and one of few that have opened outside of Japan. While some are forced to close doors, we can at least take solace that there exists the potential for new arcades to open, as we see in the case of Round 1.

We now have MLG tournaments and events all over the country and outside of it, as well. We see arcades hosting Street Fighter tournaments on their grounds, and even giving space to the organizers to set up streams so that those of us unable to go can still watch the action. Gaming as a whole is reaching a height that, in my opinion, it has never seen before. This state of possibility leaves much to be determined by us, the gamers. There is a fertile ground to cultivate a resurgence of arcades in our near future, but they will not exist, much less come to fruition, without our help.

In essence, this comes as a plea to gamers. While arcades are certainly

something that are mostly remembered by us older people, they don’t hold a fond spot in our memories simply due to misplaced affection or childhood flights of fancy.

The fact is this: going to arcades will make you a better gamer. If you sit at home and play with your friends, sure you will improve some. However, going to arcades and playing against strangers, this will reveal to you stratagem or methods you and your friends hadn’t considered. You will be playing with no lag and have no way to simply push blame off on bad connections, poor hosting, or awful netcode. On top of that, if you lose to your friends as you sit at home playing online, what have you really lost? Chances are your friends know your skill level and are probably fairly adept at detecting when you are doing well, doing poorly, trying hard, or simply not in it. The change to start a game in an arcade may seem negligible, but trust me, putting up something instead of nothing will make a huge difference. You’re not playing for told -you-so rights or to prove your ability to people you’ll never meet. When you are surrounded by a crowd that is watching your every move intently, analyzing your strategy, and plotting your demise with a rabid intensity, you will feel what’s on the line. At the same time, being “that person” that everyone wants to play, that people line up to test, when you repeatedly put them down one after another; there are few other things that give you such confidence in your own skills.

So if not for the rest of us, if not for the gamers that own the arcades, if not for the simple act of getting out of the house and doing something, if not to make new friends, go play and support your local arcades because it will make you a better gamer. People may not remember that time you went 10-0 in your favourite FPS online, but they most certainly will remember watching you 10-0 the next best guy in a money match for $20 in front of everyone.

Go Retro on Your PC An exploration into running older games on your newer PC Have you ever had the urge to play some old-school games from back in the day on your new Windows box? You know, the ones that used to come with instruction manuals and provided hint lines and BBSs for support? Well I was rummaging through some old software and found an original copy of Phantasmagoria with all seven CDs intact and decided I should give it another playthrough. Originally designed for MS-DOS, getting it to run under Windows 7 wasn't exactly straightforward.

It turns out these issues had been encountered and worked around before. On sierrahelp.com, I found an installer for Phantasmagoria that also downloads, installs and configures DOSBox along with it. As an added bonus, it copies the contents of all seven discs to a package suitable for burning to DVD. Or you can just run the game CD-less from the hard drive.

There's nothing like not having to swap out seven CDs while you're getting the bajeebus scared out of you.

My first thought was to get some virtualization software and set up a virtual machine running DOS that I could install Phantasmagoria to. After downloading VirtualBox and spending a few minutes with it, I realized it was going to be much more of a headache than I anticipated. I'd have to set up the machine, then actually install DOS on it, then hope the game installs and runs okay. Scratch that idea.

Once the installation had completed and all seven discs were copied to the hard drive, you get a shortcut on your desktop that launches DOSBox and then starts up Phantasmagoria. I may have just gotten lucky in this case and found an installer, but there are a good amount of classic games that are supported in this way.

Just on the sierrahelp.com page, there were around 100 different installers, including the King/Space/Police Quest series, the Leisure Suit Larry series, and more.

Then I remembered DOSBox. To quote their website, it is “a DOS-emulator that uses the SDL-library, which makes DOSBox very easy to port to different platforms.” Translation: DOSBox is a program that will let you play your old DOS games on new operating systems like Windows, Linux, and MacOS X. So I downloaded it and gave it a try.

They realize that what made these games great wasn't the frame rate or the polygon count or bloom effects, it was the gameplay and stories that bring back a sense of nostalgia.

Don't get me wrong, I like new shiny fullmotion videos and screens splattered with gore as much as the next guy, but that by itself is not what makes or breaks a game.

Gamers have to be drawn in, wanting “just... one... more... turn” or wondering “what happens if I choose this dialog option?” Older games were more focused on these aspects because they didn't have

On the flip side of the coin, a lot of these older games are being modified to run on modern operating systems and rereleased. GOG.com (Good Old Games) has a fair selection of old games available, everything from Advent Rising to Zork the hardware and software at their disposal to render hundreds of units on the battlefield, all destroying terrain and each other with flashy explosions. When you've only got 640K of memory to work with, and maybe 256 colors, if you're lucky, you've got to make everything else about the game fun and engaging.

At the end of the day, after I've saved the galaxy from the Zerg attack, or conquered the known world by virtue of culture alone, I still enjoy sitting down and firing up some old-school classics. Be it rescuing a princess from an evil wizard, or simply avoiding being eaten by a grue, there's something about the nostalgia and simplicity that keeps me going back for more.

After a fair amount of time spent tweaking various graphics options and getting it to recognize my DVD drive, I successfully got Phantasmagoria to run. Unfortunately I was never able to get it to run in fullscreen mode, and as you can imagine, playing a game running windowed at 640x480 on a flat panel with a native resolution of 1920x1080 isn't that pretty. Time to hit up the search engines again in hopes of finding anything that might help.

Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands. They range in price from free to $9.99, with most being $5.99 or $9.99. Oh, and they're DRM-free, so you don't have to worry about an active Internet connection, or installing it on your new PC after an upgrade.

Obviously there is a demand for these classic old-school games, and some companies have seized the opportunity to redistribute them to dedicated gamers.

HOARDERS Stories of Extreme Collectors Sarah, whose online alias is SamuraiSmurfette, is a 30 year old woman living in Canada with her awesome fiancé and their two cats. As a young girl, Sarah's father would buy every new Intellivision game as it was released, amassing what would be just the start of her mammoth collection of games. Nowadays, Sarah buys up large quantities of bargain games, weeds out what she already owns, and resells the remainder to make up costs. It's a brilliant method for collecting, and one that's helped her build up her library to nearly 4,000 titles! Beyond collecting, Sarah enjoys painting, costuming, cooking and gardening. She also really appreciates a good micro-brew.

Has your collection taken over your house, or just a room of your house?

Well, the “main” library has its own room, but there is the current-gen stuff in the living room (along with a pile of rock band instruments), arcade machines and kiosks in the basement and garage, and my DS is always by my bedside. There are also tons of boxes of stuff in other closets and the spare room in the basement. So I guess my answer is that it has pretty much taken over, yes.

Do you have any retail kiosks. arcade cabinets, etc...?

I do have retail kiosks for Xbox, GameCube, PS2 and N-Gage, two arcade machines (Spy Hunter and a Neo Geo 1-slot). I have lots of posters, and promo materials, including a lightup GameCube sign, a life-sized decal of Samus, a big plastic 3DO sign and a 4-foot high sculpture of Master Chief!

What are your favourite genres?

I like short-attention span games; things I can play for a bit and put down and not have to worry about “where was I going again?” Puzzle games, music games, Japanese games with ridiculous premises, and I have a soft spot for games with unique plastic peripherals.

What do you find yourself playing more: older, or current generation games?

Probably current gen, as I really enjoy 2-player co-op and multiplayer games, and there are far more of them these days. I like having friends over for gaming nights and a lot of that comes down to what kind of gamers they are. Whether we bring out Rock Band, SceneIt, Wii Sports and Kinect, or Mega Bomberman, GoldenEye, You Don’t Know Jack and Super Street Fighter 2.

How many A/V switch boxes are connected to your game room TV? Two in the retro room, and I think there are two or three RF connectors daisy-chained together. The living room also has one HD selector.

Largest set within your collection?

By volume: Xbox with nearly 500 titles. By completion: Intellivision is still edging it out at about 70% completion.

What type of TV do you have in your game room, and what's connected to it?

In the retro room, there’s a Samsung GXTV. It’s a neat little unit marketed just for gamers. It has a built in speaker system with sub and multiple inputs. I got it for free because it had no sound (a common issue with the folding speakers). A quick re-wire/re-solder job and it’s as good as new! Right now, it’s got my NES, SNES mini, Japanese PS1, N64, 3DO, Dreamcast, PC Engine (Japanese TurboGrafx), SEGA Genesis/CD/32X stack, Xbox, PS2 and TurboGrafx.

What consoles do you own?

Atari 5200, Neo Geo AES, Neo Geo CD, Turbo Duo, JVC X’eye, Atari Jaguar CD. Those are the main one’s I don't own. It’s a shorter list that way. I have over 30 unique consoles plus variations, colors, and imports. There’s a few other import-only ones I’d like, too: Wonderswan, PSX, Panasonic Q, etc..

How many peripherals?

I don’t keep anything hooked up. I like to keep things tidy.

Everything is organized in drawers. Although, the Rock Band instruments are almost always all over the living room. All in all, there are probably a few hundred pieces.

What's the craziest thing in your collection?



The Thrustmaster Fighting Arena was pretty terrible, although I could play Street Fighter as Blanka by squatting on the floor and rocking side to side.



The Onimusha Wireless Katana for PS2. I have it set up on a shelf on its stand, and everyone asks if it’s a real sword. I point at the buttons, and the next reaction is “what the…?”

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A PS1 import game called Maestro Music that comes with a conductor’s baton controller, the PS1 Gamester Evolution power-glove-knockoff-piece-of-junk, and, of course, Steel Battalion for Xbox.

What's the crown jewel of your collection?

I think it’s a tie between 2 of my coolest Xbox items, just because it’s stuff that was never sold commercially.

 

1:2 sculpture of Master Chief, because the Chief is awesome.

Xbox debug kit.

I do have a bunch of pre-release build software as well. [It is kind of] funny playing an unfinished version of Ghost Recon, and seeing helicopters fly by with no animations and text blocks that say “story development goes here”.

The newest Mortal Kombat title is back to its roots; removing a number or subtitle, rebooting the plot, resurrecting the characters, and going back to 2D. When Midway went bankrupt, the team reformed under a new banner, NetherRealm Studios and WB publishing. While critical reception of their last project, Mortal Kombat vs.

DC, was overall positive, fan feedback has been mixed. That title had been rated T for Teen as the fatalities and gore the series had been known for was toned down. Now, it is back to the series’ origins, rebooting and retelling the story of Mortal Kombat 1-3 and incorporating the excessive level of violence those titles were once famous for. I've owned or played every major MK release and enjoyed the story-heavy campaign of MK vs. DC, so I was excited to give the demo a spin.

My first impressions were rather petty. The title screen is a moving animation of the series’ heavy-weights, Scorpion and Sub-Zero, with Sub-Zero on the receiving end of a boneshattering uppercut. This is subtly demonstrating one of MK's new features: the x-ray attacks. These x-ray attacks are performed by building up a 3-stage super bar (by being hit or being blocked). At stages 1 and 2, you can unleash more powerful versions of your normal moves using up just a part of the bar. At stage 3 you can use a full bar to perform a hit that performs a big damage, bonedestroying move. This system plays out very similarly to Street Fighter 4'’s power bars, combining them into a single bar that stays charged between rounds. Much of Mortal Kombat appears to be a response to Street Fighter 4, similarly as Mortal Kombat vs. DC was a response to Marvel vs. Capcom. The super bar is present, the fight has been brought to 2D, and the characters are all throwbacks to the early days of Mortal Kombat III. But this does not have to be a bad thing. Mortal Kombat has never been about the competitive tournament scene. Like a cheesy Kung-Fu movie, it does not need to get high praise from serious movie critics to be a fun ride.

While Street Fighter receives harsh criticism if any character is deemed overpowered, Mortal Kombat relishes in the idea of fans picking favorite characters and championing them as "the best". Mortal Kombat is at its best when the action on screen is "ridiculous" and the damage done is "brutal!" This doesn't stop them from releasing a "Tournament Edition," which includes an MK button layout Fight Stick, or a Kollector's Edition with two bookends of Scorpion impaling Sub-Zero on his iconic spear.

Alright, that's it. Sub-Zero is MY character, yet everything from the Kollector's Edition to the menu screen has him getting the crap kicked out of him. When I finally sat down and played as him, it was anything but.

His classic moves are all present, including his ice blast, ice clone, slide kick, and a freezing puddle. All can be amped up using some of the new super bar, and linked into long combos as many of the recent trailers have emphasized. In fact, while MK has returned to the 2D plane, this game does not play like a revamped Mortal Kombat III. Jump kicks, sweeps, and uppercuts are all present, but mashing the punch buttons will not get you very far. Instead, you will want to consult the moves list for a few reliable combos you can perform to derive some of killer instinct length. While aimed at bringing in new fans and simultaneously appealing to nostalgia, the combo system leaves room for mastery. Whether this leads to a competitive scene, frustrated casual players, or both online can't be known yet. A lot of emphasis of early previews and

interviews has been made on these long combos and the new x-ray attacks and how much they add to the overall brutality of the title. I wasn't as impressed.

The level of violence portrayed is barely greater than any other Mortal Kombat title, leading all the way back to the original arcade release in 1992.

The x-ray attacks, while brutal, are just a step above the bone breaking dirty hit moves of Blitz: The League.

Mortal Kombat'’s greatest strength has always been making the audience gasp in surprise at how far it can go, but the latest entry's demo was unable to illicit these reactions from me.

Even Superman's teen-rated fatality of punching someone into the ground managed to make me smirk a little, but for some reason I was left underwhelmed by the fatalities and x-ray attacks of the demo. Nothing anyone did surprised me. By going back to their roots, NetherRealm is showing me everything that I've seen before.

Upping the graphical fidelity of a fatality isn't enough; my memory and imagination sufficiently filled in "high res textures" back in '92. At least when Superman was performing a "brutality", it was a fresh take on the character.

I think a lot of this could have been addressed by introducing a new art style. Street Fighter 4 re-launched the franchise using a unique and colorful look that no one had seen before, but the new Mortal Kombat lacks the same artistic punch. Technically, the game looks great, running on a heavily modified Unreal Engine 3, but the violence on screen looks just like it has in the 8 previous entries of the series. The Unreal Engine is capable of portraying a Gears of War chainsaw attack, and Kratos has some truly inspired methods of death in his own series. Mortal Kombat needs to inspire this reaction in its players, not just by increasing the resolution of gore but by presenting it in a new way. It needs more brutality to break from the pack, and reclaim its place at the top of the ladder.

INTERVIEW A Chat with Chris Mahnken from the Tribes Franchise How did a six-year-old, critically-acclaimed game franchise die and why has it been so hard to revive? Who and what killed it? Chris Mahnken, the producer for Tribes: Vengeance, tells us about the events that 'killed' the franchise's hopeful revival and its final installment released in 2004.

Tribes: Vengeance garnered solid reviews. How did the fans react?

I know I've heard some die-hard Tribes fans disparage Vengeance for various reasons.

The original Starsiege: Tribes was released in 1998 as an online only, team-based, class-based first person shooter. It was the first of its kind to introduce jet packs and aerial combat mixed with standard run-and-gun shooting. The original Tribes was also among the first of its kind to seamlessly integrate long range outdoor combat with indoor combat, as well as vehicle-based combat, all into a single game.

WoW. They’ve got a big investment in their characters and gear, and their friends are all there. It’s not as easy to recognize, but in the shooter market you get exactly the same thing, only people haven’t invested their time in gear and levels, but in skills. When you change things you devalue their skills, and that’s not happy time.

So what went wrong? And why has Chris Mahnken received the nickname as the man who killed Tribes? Chris tells us about the game's troubled development and "why he did it".

Set the scene for us when you were handed the Tribes IP. I was working at the Sierra offices in Seattle - on a Special Forces game that never saw the light of day - when VU Games management decided to cut headcount by shutting down the Dynamix offices in Oregon. Just about everybody got the “immediate” package: “Thanks, here’s your check and a cardboard box for your stuff, no need to come in tomorrow”. The exception was the Tribes 2 team.

Those guys were told that they had to stick around until the patch for Tribes 2 was finished, or they wouldn’t get their parting gift, which was a pretty big bonus. So, they all stayed. But it would be a stretch to call them motivated. You might say they were motivated to do the bare minimum to keep from getting fired, but not to excel. As you might guess, the resulting patch would best be described as doing slightly more good than harm. So, that was how I picked up the Tribes franchise.

What were your goals for Tribes: Vengeance in terms of story, gameplay, etc.? What did you want to accomplish for the franchise?

My goals were to make a Navy Seals game, but Marketing decided that before we could do the Seals game we should do a 4th Tribes game. Our marketing manager for Vengeance was a big fan of the Tribes franchise, although he couldn’t really play. Over the course of a few months we worked ourselves into a bit of a frenzy about making Tribes more of a competition based game for teams, and creating a solid single player story to bring new people in. We sold the game to management as Tribes Story – the first Tribes game with a real story attached. So to sum up: Sports-like multiplayer, and single player story to bring in loads of new players.

People don’t like change. You see it all the time with people who leave

World Of Warcraft to go play something else, and then go back to

Imagine what would happen if the NBA changed the height of the basket, the size of the court, and the weight of the ball every year. I believe we just might see some disquiet from the players.

So with Vengeance being more like the original Tribes, and less like Tribes 2 in regards to physics and map design, we made part of the audience happy, and part unhappy. But leaving out the tools the hardcore fans needed to hold competitive matches made everybody angry. I think that if the tools had been there, the polish had been applied, and there had been any marketing behind the game, it would have been accepted by the fans. Instead it was doomed to fail by the choices of Vivendi management.

I saw you cleaning up bystanders playing Tribes at the Playtribes.com booth at PAX 2009. Now that the rights to Tribes have been sold to Hi-Rez Studios, what are your thoughts about the future of the IP? I wish them all the best, and if it’s a good game I’ll be playing it.

They’re going to have a big hill to climb in order to satisfy what is perhaps the most vocal and divided fan base in games. Tribes 1 and Tribes 2 fans make the disagreement between Quake 1 and Quake 2 fans look like Sunday brunch with Memaw.

There still seems to be a strong Tribes community. Do you think it would be possible to see Tribes resurrected in such a way that it could take a spot among the FPS multiplayer elite like Team Fortress 2?

No. I hope it could, but without a console presence I don’t see any game making that kind of a move, and if ever there was a game that screams “don’t put me on console, I’ll suck”, its Tribes. There just isn’t enough fine control on console for a shooter like tribes where everything happens so fast in all three (XYZ) axes at all times.

The ability to fly past somebody in mid air, and spin with them as they pass from above and to your right to below behind and to your left is unique to a mouse and keyboard layout. If somebody can figure out how to do it on console then they deserve a medal. So far lots of auto-aim help is the only thing that can come close to saving a game like Tribes on consoles.

In our previous issue we covered some of the basics of RIFT, this time we’re going to explore Trion’s offer to gamers everywhere a little further. First and foremost, to repeat a common theme and get it out of the way, yes, RIFT is a lot like World of Warcraft. It is very familiar, comfortable territory even without a Tauren anywhere in sight. So rather than concentrate on ways RIFT is like WoW, I’m going to start from the places it is different.

The largest departure has to be in the class system.

I’ve heard some comparison to Guild Wars, but it’s not really an accurate one outside of only being able to change souls at a trainer.

The system is simple, but allows for a level of customization and varying play style that I haven’t seen before.

When you start your Telaran adventure you choose a calling: Warrior, Priest, Rogue, or Mage, and have one soul; once class tree, and as you level you gain soul points to spend in it. Each level grants one point, while every third will net you two points to spend.

As you spend points in a given soul you gain “root”

abilities - think of these as class abilities.

Other abilities are granted by wherein the soul tree you spend your points - if you don’t want a certain ability, there’s sure to be another place to spend that point that will be something you do want and still move you toward your next root ability.

By the time you’ve exited the starting area you’ve earned three souls in total, and about nine points. Your main soul will have probably granted three or four different abilities, your secondary maybe two or three, and your tertiary probably only one.

You’re introduced to the world, taught how Rifts work, and given quests that teach you how to collect worldevent currencies to spend on new loot.

The three souls you’ve chosen are fairly static until level 13, when you can start taking quests to unlock additional souls for your calling. Once your stable starts to fill up you can purchase a re-spec to reassign your points and swap out souls, or additional roles to set up a whole new grid of souls and abilities.

So, if you want your Rogue to be hotswappable from a healer to a tank to pure damage at the push of a button, you can set that up for an extremely reasonable fee. And yes, I said Rogue tank - I was certainly surprised, but it was a pretty good group in the end. If you want to play it (Mage tank notwithstanding), Trion has probably given you a way to make it happen.

The next major difference you would notice are the Rifts themselves. They’re

everywhere, and pretty hard to miss.

And while they can open up right on top of you, you’re given plenty of warning to find somewhere not under attack before the monsters start appearing, and even then the event mobs usually stay within their area very politely so you can continue picking wildflowers for that nice guardsman in town.

However; if you decide to make a difference in the world and take on the planar apocalypse, you probably won’t want to do it alone. WoW would have you spam chat incessantly with your name, rank, and serial number and hope that a group comes along. In RIFT, you click a button. A pretty, shiny, candy like button that says “Join Public Group.” I love this button. It’s a trick that was used with some success in Warhammer Online, and I’m glad to see it back.

For rift events, invasions, collecting elf ears, whatever you like, if you see another player running around doing the same thing you are, you can form a group on the fly without all the strange courtship rituals usually involved in doing so. When quest items drop they drop for everyone, the experience penalty for being in a group is negligible, and you can complete quests while in a raid. So, if you and a stranger have joined forces to hunt spiders and a rift pops open, don’t be surprised if you two-man group suddenly becomes ten. Once your ragtag group of rampaging heroes charges into the fray, your objectives for each stage of the rift appear on the right of the screen with the handy little “encounter widget.” It has buttons for the leader board, loot, and a gauge for your personal contribution to closing the rift, defeating the invaders, or taking down the boss. Contribution seems to be based mainly on damage done, but sometimes you may find yourself at maximum contribution for no clear reason.

I can only assume that the system behind the widget meter is one that will be evaluated many times in the future, but it’s not something that screams for immediate repair.

<- and below, 2 Pages of RIFT Feature

As you’re bouncing along, slaying the forces of evil, collecting souls to expand your horizons, closing rifts left and right, and generally having a fine time, the music has been outstanding and you’ve only thought about switching it off once because “some Maiden would be perfect to help me grind faster!” But the game doesn’t feel like a grind. Quests are short, quest hubs are close enough to the objectives that you don’t have a lot of time to sit back and fret about music, and yeah, the music really is pretty darned good.

The sound effects are unobtrusive, but effective, and the game is staggeringly beautiful after a too-long tour in Azeroth.

And best of all, it

doesn’t crash.

In the several weeks I’ve been huddled over my keyboard like an addict, RIFT has

changes applied, fidgeting like he’d really like something to do if that was quite alright with me. When Trion says “your game will restart shortly” they mean business; the client starts, you log in automatically, your current character is selected, and you’re right back where you were. And it happens with a quickness that says they too have waited through those dark times when someone has to say “do we wait for them, or find another healer?” As for the video changes I made to cause this unfortunate event they were my preference; my gaming system is far from new, and slowing down some of the pretty in the game makes it a lot smoother. Newer systems should have no problem whatsoever, and honestly, if I wanted to see all the marvellously textured, shadowed, and lit work that Trion has put into the game, I could still do it without problem, just with some very small video lag.

Dungeons can be a make or break situation for any MMO. RIFT does a darn fine job in this department as well. The dungeons I’ve played through are all very well laid out, hard to get lost in, and creative in the way they ask the players to work together. I’ve had every kind of tank and healer available, played as melee and ranged, and it’s all fun.

crashed one time, and it was probably my fault for changing all my video settings at once, on the fly, standing in the middle of a rift. At the time of crash I muttered some small profanities at my houseplant (which wilted a little... sorry little guy) and clicked the “send report” button on Trion’s error catcher. Once the report was sent I got up for a new beverage and prepared to wait through the queue to get back onto my full population server, or Shard as Trion calls them. When I got back to my chair my character was standing right where I’d left them, video

There wasn’t a serious feeling of intensity or danger in the dungeons I faced, but I chalk that up to good groups more than bad design. For the higher levels there are Elite versions of dungeons, and deeper raids coming with patch 1.1. I’m not disappointed in the least with the dungeons, but the lack of a dungeon finder was a little surprising. It still didn’t take me long to find groups, even as a damage class, thanks to level-tier chat channels (1-9, 10-19, and so on) that could keep me limited to people who probably wanted to do the same things I did regardless of what zone they happened to be in. The developers have stated that a dungeon finder is in the

works, so I’ll keep my clicking finger ready for another shiny, candy like button that will fill me with childlike glee.

Warfronts are fun. Really fun. Stay up too late and do a double-take at the clock fun. The class system, in allowing for diversity and surprise, does not complicate the PvP process in the least, and some substantial design time went into the warfront maps. Every ten levels you’ll go up one more bracket in a very familiar fashion, and the game does give stat boosts to help level the playing field a little. I tried out each of the callings with several different soul combinations and none of them felt crippled, though a few were clearly over the top. Anyone can jump in and start fighting, and RIFT does allow you to queue from wherever you happen to be. PvP rewards require Favor as well as faction notoriety and overall PvP rank, but a casual player will still be able to grab some starter loot after just a few warfronts.

The PvP earned soul probably isn’t one that you’ll use as a main, but rather a very strong support soul for your chosen style of face melting.

The Crafting system is simplified; three skills per character, no secondary skills.

A single window gives you access to all your crafting skills, and the gear you cobble together can be a fairly nice bonus depending on how quickly you gain levels.

Gathering feels very friendly, with flowers, sticks, rocks, and dead animals appearing regularly around the world map.

All that being said, the user interface is still a lot like World of Warcraft. Of course, it’s a lot like every other MMO I’ve played as well, but the in-game changes set RIFT apart as something that’s not just an MMO, it’s an MMO that’s fun to play, driven by the player, and has nothing but sky ahead for future growth.

The

on Free-to-Play MMOs

A good video game is like a movie that lasts for hours. A great video game is one that not only lasts for hours, but completely immerses the gamer in its world.

An amazing video game does all of the above, while giving the gamer complete control of his or her online destiny. Such games sound like what dreams are made of, but they do exist. Known as “massive multiplayer online role-playing games - or MMORPGSs for short - these games act as an endless choose-your-own-adventure within a choose-your-own-adventure game; one where the decisions and actions of one gamer directly affects the decisions and actions of all the thousands of other gamers who are playing at the same time.

These MMORPGs, while incredibly popular, are also quite pricey and usually require a monthly subscription. While a fee of about $19/month may not sound like much, annually it’s $228. Couple that with subscribing to more than one game and there goes your pay check. With the economy still struggling, that can be a bit slightly damaging to your wallet. MMORPG developers know this, and have come up with some awesome games that fit any gamers budget: free-to-play MMOs (F2PMMO).

pack for a little extra cash. This seemingly innocent way to fund the game can actually turn the MMORPG game into a have versus have not society, which is pretty much as accurate a representation of the real world as you can get and not necessarily the type of environment gamers are looking for. Regardless of your feelings on this matter, most gamers seem to be in agreement that a game that is free to play is at least worth trying out.

However, this doesn't mean you should just start downloading every free-to-play MMO you can get your hands on. Like with all video games, there are certain criteria that must be met in order to make your gaming experience time well spent. After all, time is money and just because something is free, doesn't mean it's worth playing. Here at Fraggs, we know this and wanted to make your choice a little bit easier, so we've compiled a little cheat sheet of what you should look for when choosing a F2PMMO. The order of importance of each component clearly depends on your individual preference, but the overall list holds true for most.

Character customization seems to be at the top of the list for most gamers. A great F2PMMO, like Battlestar Galatica, allows you to completely customize your avatar, as well as ship parts including computers, weapons and engines that advance your character. Most F2PMMOs don't allow for both visually aesthetic and character advancement customizations, so if you greatly enjoy having a one of a kind character in the truest sense of the word, then this is the game for you.

Player versus Player, or PvP, is another major selling point in all MMOs. After all, what's the point of playing a massive multiplayer game if you can't go head to head against your fellow players. Possibly one of the best parts of PvP is the sheer variety

No, your eyes are not playing tricks on you. That does, indeed, read “free”. These games simply require the gamer to download the game, never once mentioning the all mighty dollar. Most F2P games, however, aren't as free as they appear. Yes, they all allow you to begin game play without paying, but the more time you spend in the world, the more you realize that upgrading your weapons, outfits or other such necessities costs money.

Some F2PMMOs simply offer an expansion

of combat options that fit this criteria.

Open PvP, in which you can basically kill just about all of your fellow players for no reason whatsoever is more of a rarity in the F2P world, but does exist. If that's

the type of PvP you prefer, War of Leg-

ends is the game for you.

Faction wars - in which you join an existing side and fight other existing sides and guild wars - in which you join a new player created side and fight other player created sides - are two very popular and very fun, PvP styles. World of Warcraft is perhaps the most popular version of these styles, though they do charge a monthly subscription fee. For a F2P version of this classic style, check out Loong The Power of the Dragon and Battlestar Galatica.

Both games will quickly make you forget that you did not open your wallet to join and fight with a guild or a faction.

Despite what you might think, not all gamers want to spend their entire time in an MMO fighting one another. Some would rather limit the fighting to specific zones or areas, or forgo the fighting all together and focus on beating their fellow gamers in a race or match. The all-time favorite Dungeons and Dragons, currently ranked as the number one F2PMMO virtually everywhere, fits the arena mold quite nicely.

A big draw to MMOs is the gamers ability to create his or her own items to be used for trade This process, known as crafting, is the primary means for the gamer to acquire wealth and status in the online world. This is where the “free”part can be misleading. For a small fee, many F2P games allow the player to buy extra items to aid their economic avatars. Some entrepreneurial gamers even spend a long

Everything to Get You Started time crafting items, only to sell them on eBay and other real world trading sites.

But even with this little thorn in its side, F2P games such as King of Kings 3, have managed to create a world in which crafting is the preferred method of achieving economic gain.

One factor that causes many gamers to release their inner nerd rage, is repetitive game play used to enhance their character. Also know as grinding, this method of character advancement has the MMORPG community up in arms, figuratively speaking of course, because it really is a matter of preference. Some gamers thrive on performing the same tasks over and over, and feel it's the best way to prove your skill. Others prefer a strong questing system and like to advance levels fairly quickly without repeating activities for hours on end. If the former sounds like you, try the game Luna Online. If you are more of the latter, try the game War of Legends.

When listing the qualities that make a good F2PMMO, or any MMO for that matter, we can't forget usability. After all, nothing is worse than a game that would have been cool, if only you could understand how to actually play the game. This is perhaps the most important and seemingly overlooked factor that makes virtually all games, especially MMORPGs worth playing. Unlike games you can buy in the store, MMORPGs do not come with a little book of instructions. It's therefore imperative that gamers are able to grasp the mechanics of the game so they can quickly enter the game and become a contributing member of the world in which they are playing. This might sound like quite a feat to achieve for a game that does not require any method of payment for playing, and while many F2P games fall short in this area, games such as Aika and Allods hit the mark perfectly.

While all of these aforementioned qualities help to make a game great, the one that stands out far above the rest is a game's uniqueness. There are a slew of F2P games currently on the market and just like in any creative endeavour, a game that stands out above the rest is the game that people will remember and tell their friends about. A game that reminds the gamer of another game, even if it's really enjoyable to play, will get lost in the shuffle and take on the coveted â&#x20AC;&#x153;copycatâ&#x20AC;? title. Very few people want to spend their time playing a game thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eerily similar to a game they've already played. After all,

the one thing people hate wasting more than their money is their time. World of Tanks is one such highly unique F2PMMO that wastes neither your money (because it's free) nor your time.

A good video game is only as good as the sum of its parts. For a free-to-play MMO to be considered good, there are a lot of parts that must at least meet, if not exceed, expectation. No game is perfect, and as such, each gamer decides for his or herself which parts are essential, and which parts can be skimped on. The quality of a F2P game then becomes based on this order, and as such, is highly debatable. We could go on for page after page discussing the order of these parts, and why each order is correct. But that would be highly boring and would waste time, and we all know that people hate wasting their time almost as much as they hate wasting their money. But one thing is clear: those wanting to enter the MMORPG world can do so without dipping into their bank accounts. That, my fellow gamers, is something truly worth celebrating.

Terms to Know F2P: Free-to-play Indicates a game does not have a cost for basic gameplay. However, some games have an in-game cost for items and features.

MMO: Massive multiplayer online A good indicator if a game is an MMO or not, is whether you are interacting with many players at once. MMOs are not only RPGs (see below) they may also be racing games, shooters and real-time strategy games.

RPG: Role-playing game Role-playing games are games in which the player enacts the actions or role of a character.

PvP: Player vs. Player Player vs. Player is a type of combat, in which in-game battles are conducted between live participants. Although popular with MMOs, an online multiplayer shooter is also considered a PvP by definition.

We put our little helper monkeys to work each day, searching every corner of the Internet for consumer products that make us tingle with excitement. The monkeys do not disappoint.

Here’s what they came up with this month!

Razer Mamba - $129.99 The Razer Mamba, designed for a MAC, provides a truly epic wireless gaming experience. With a 1ms polling rate, the Mamba is one of the fastest on the market. With the ability to go from wired to wireless, and with the accompanied charging dock, you will never miss a second of your favourite game.

Phantom Keystroker v2.9 - $19.99 The Phantom Keystroker may look like your regular USB, but when connected it pranks the user by toggling caps lock and making random mouse movements. Pranksters unite!

Buy at http://frag.gs/phantom

Buy at http://frag.gs/mamba

Lilliput 7” Touch Monitor - $99.99 This 7” touch monitor connects to your PC via USB to allow the addition of a second display without the clutter. This handy display is perfect for any programs you want to keep an eye on.

Buy at http://frag.gs/touchmonitor

Poufman by Qayot - $1850.00 Although expensive, this Italian made sitting space closely resembles that of the infamous Pacman.

Available at several furniture locations, the Poufman makes a great addition to the perfect gaming room.

Evil d-pad by Evil Controllers - $84.99 This controller mod transforms your typical Xbox 360 controllerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s d-pad with the introduction of four distinct buttons, allowing fewer errors while playing your favourite games.

Buy at http://frag.gs/dpad

Buy at http://frag.gs/poufman

Retro NES USB controller - $29.99 This controller connects to your PC via USB to truly get a retro experience while playing your favorite NES emulator.

Buy at http://frag.gs/usb

Game Central Organiser - $55.00 This 4.5â&#x20AC;&#x2122; tall organiser provides four shelves for all your games. In addition, there are four hooks for controllers and two additional hooks to hang your guitar controllers. At the base of the organiser is a final shelf for up to three consoles.

Buy at http://frag.gs/shelf

Porsche GT2 Steering Wheel - $249.95 The Porsche GT2 Steering Wheel is made from alcantara leather, the same material used in the Porsche GT2, and includes a tuning function for personalised customization. This steering wheel is also compatible with all PS3, Xbox 360 and PC racing simulators.

Buy at http://frag.gs/gt2wheel

REVIEWS Retail Games Dragon Age II Total War: Shogun 2 Crysis 2 Homefront Gemini Rue You Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Know Jack Fate of the World

30 31 32 33 34 35 35

Downloadable Games Battle: Los Angeles Slam Bolt Scrappers Beyond Good & Evil HD

36 36 36

DLC Civilization 5: Polynesia Da Vinci Disappearance Jill and Shuma-Gorath

37 37 37

Hardware Raptor Gaming M3X Razer Ferox Sonar Championship 5.1 Chameleon X-1

38 39 40 41

Dragon Age II Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360 Genre: RPG Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: BioWare Rating: M for mature MSRP: $59.99

Dragon Age II is the (not so) long-waited follow up to Dragon Age: Origins, a landmark hit for BioWare. DA2 comes surprisingly soon after DA:O, especially from the studio that took far more time releasing Mass Effect’s sequel. It was so soon, in fact, that many were not very happy about its speedy production and release.

Taking place during the same time period as the previous release, the player takes over the role of a character fleeing the Darkspawn with his family. It’s basically the other side of the coin from what was happening in DA:O. On the good side, the game is quite pretty (though I played through on PC with high res textures and max settings), and definitely has the familiar BioWare control feel that DA:O and the Mass Effect series shared. The leveling system and point allocation has been streamlined, to some degree, and offers more opportunity to branch out and make tailored builds.

The writing is outstanding, as expected, and the main characters are well fleshed out with unique personas and interesting stories. Voice acting follows suit and really lends believable emotion to the characters during your progression through the story.

There are, however, some places that BioWare could have done better… sometimes significantly better. As you flee the Darkspawn, you end up in the city of Kirkwall. Unfortunately, that’s where you spend the majority of the time. Where DA:O had the feel of constant progres-

sion, moving from place to place, DA2 is much more stagnant. You go fetch something, save a person, run an errand, and then come back to the city. There you receive another quest (or simply choose the next one from your log) and basically repeat. The point being: you are back and forth all over the city. This really drags down the pacing, at least in comparison to its predecessor. Most of the quests don’t impress, but instead bleed together. I often found myself wondering if I was at this particular place outside the city gates in order to save someone, or maybe to find something, perhaps to kill a bad guy? This happened to the degree that I frequently did quests I didn’t actually set out to do; they simply happened to be in the same place.

While you do come across some interesting characters to add to your party, if you don’t have previous knowledge of where to get them and what they do, you may well find yourself with a bit of an odd crew of classes. This isn’t necessarily a big deal, as normal mode is really a cake walk, but from starting on hard difficulty, it really made me work. On the harder difficulties, the big fights are very dependent on positioning. You almost always start in an open area with tons of baddies jumping you, and you will almost certainly die in those circumstances (especially if you haven’t gotten a well-rounded team yet).

The good news is that there is a way around this; there is almost always a fairly nearby corridor where you can tell your team to go, thereby funneling the enemies into a manageable group. The bad news is that it gets pretty tedious doing this on every big fight.

While I appreciate the new leveling and point attribution system for skills, there’s something else that diminishes your team’s development. For some reason, no one but your main character gets to upgrade (or even wear) boots, helmets,

gloves, etc. What if I’m running two mages and want to give my slightly worse gear to my secondary mage? Not a chance. Instead, it sits in your inventory until you sell it. My question is, why would the game be changed in this manner? My answer is that I have no idea.

While I did like the writing and graphics, along with the staple Dragon Age sounds and music, DA2 failed to move forward in so many ways, although it did move backward in a number of them. The overall game feels like development was rushed, but the pacing is sluggish and repetitive.

DA:O was an incredible accomplishment and a game I played through repeatedly.

Unfortunately, DA2 falls significantly short of improving upon it. At the same time, improving on a masterpiece like that is no small task, especially when the game was put so quickly through development.

DA2 is a lot of fun overall, and I did enjoy playing it, but it also fell short of my hopes, taking some steps backward.

What We Liked Nice graphics, especially with the high resolution textures Great writing and voice acting What We Hated Tons of backtracking through town Slow pace and menial quest rewards Mediocre and repetitive tasks

Rent

7.0

Total War: Shogun 2 Platform: PC Genre: Real-Time Strategy Publisher: SEGA Developer: Creative Assembly Rating: T for Teen MSRP: $49.95

Shogun 2 is a return to the Total War

roots, while preserving many of the innovations made to the series the past decade. While many games attempt to pass off dumbing down as “streamlining”, Shogun 2’s simplification feels smart. Despite any reductions, the scale remains epic.

The presentation and gameplay are polished. While there are some noticeable bugs, Shogun 2 is the least buggy TW title.

While the gameplay is Shogun 2’s greatest improvement, its presentation is its strength. Traditional Japanese instruments and soundtrack greet the player at every turn, even the loading screen has a motivating song. Featuring appropriately accented voice acting, the sound of TW:S2 expertly sells the setting and mood.

The Japanese feel is not just in the use of Samurai swordsmen units, the diplomacy dialog dripping with respectful language, or the overall objective of conquering Japan, but in every aspect of the game, not to disregard the awe-inspiring might of hundreds of samurai warriors. Battles between armies still involve large unit counts, with each controllable unit usually consisting of at least a hundred individual people, and each person represented on the field. It’s an impressive sight to behold, artistically and technically.

The campaign map is quite large with many major and minor powers to contend with using diplomacy, special campaign map units or traditional armies. Like past TW titles, battles can be automated, al-

lowing players to play an entire campaign without ever entering into a real-time battle. However, the real-time combat in Shogun 2 is quite fun and should be experienced. Part of the streamlining process has removed many units with duplicate functionality, leaving a smaller variety of vastly different unit types. This allows for quick battlefield identification (which, on the highest difficulty removes tooltips and requires you to identify based only on the unit graphics), and emphasizes unit strengths and weaknesses.

to date. It contains a massive amount of single player content, including custom and historical battles, as well as the classic campaign. It also includes an impressive multiplayer suite. While streamlined, Shogun 2 does not skimp on the content and, most importantly, each individual portion is fun.

Many games can claim to be an experience that is greater as a sum of their parts. Shogun 2’s parts are each an experience, and when taken together you get a truly Total Package.

Multiplayer matchmaking focuses on the real-time battles, allowing players to create a virtual avatar to bring into battle and fight against other players. As you win multiplayer battles, you can level up your avatar, gain new abilities and access new unit types usable in future multiplayer battles. You can also collect armor pieces from achievements or “random drops” from victories, and equipping these will give various bonuses to your avatar, as well as changes his appearance. If enabled, there is also an option to allow human opponents to match make with you while you play the single player campaign, at which point they will assume control of the AI army for a particular battle. Multiplayer matchmaking is where I encountered the majority of bugs I experienced: from long wait times to hard crashes to the desktop, I sometimes had trouble getting into a match.

The campaign map can also be played with (or against) a fellow human. Here I found a few other oddities, such as when I would get attacked, my co-op partner would see the upcoming battle stats and would decide to spectate or auto-battle. Only after he chose to spectate would I then be presented the same information and could choose to fight, flee, or auto-battle.

Total War: Shogun 2 is an excellent game and possibly the strongest Total War title

What We Liked Streamlined yet complex gameplay.

Excellent presentation Lots of mode What We Hated Could have been 10.0, but held back by bugs

Buy

9.0

Crysis 2 Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360 Genre: First-Person Shooter Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: Crytek Rating: M for Mature MSRP: $59.99 The sequel to the 2007 game of the same title, Crysis 2 is set in the year 2023 and details an alien invasion. As the main character, you are given the task of locating Dr. Gould, who is believed to have vital information regarding the alien race.

As a first-person shooter, players expect particular aspects and key features to be present in Crysis 2. Some such features would include weaponry and story and player controls. To me, those are the essential factors that make up any good FPS, whether you are playing the campaign or online multiplayer.

The story in the single player campaign, although simple, is told in a very interesting and captivating way, providing cut scenes, dialog, and action. In other FPS games, the story is often dissected with cut scenes, and more often than not, those cut scenes become excessive, causing the story to be less captivating and more of a bore. With Crysis 2, you won’t have that issue. Although cut scenes are used, they are done in a manner which only progresses the story, and is often split with action and player missions. By doing this, Crysis 2 succeeds in capturing their audience’s attention.

Weaponry is very important, as the ability to swap between assault rifles and sniper rifles is often the difference between life and death. In the online multiplayer, the weapons are excellent and offer several choices. In addition, there is an upgrade system in place, where more experience will unlock equipment, allowing the player

to further customize the load outs.

While discussing online multiplayer, it is important to mention some of the known issues and problems that were encountered during online gameplay. PC gamers will notice several issues with Crysis 2’s online multiplayer. Some users have experienced screen flicker and problems with logging in on their online profile, amongst other lesser-known issues, usually unique to each individual. EA has announced a patch to resolve many of these problems, however many users have reported the ineffectiveness of said patch, and are still unable to play online.

The biggest downfall for the Xbox version of Crysis 2 is most definitely the controls.

Although some may argue comparing this game to others of the same genre is not fair, it is hard not to. Other big games such as Battlefield: Bad Company and Call of Duty have always, in my mind, had great success in this aspect. With Crysis 2, the controls are rather difficult. In most games, if you are familiar with the genre, the basic controls are all the same. On an Xbox FPS, some basics include your R and L analogs to move or look, RT to fire, LT to aim, RB for grenade, B and R3 to either crouch or melee, etc.

To me, those are the genre basics, and there seems to be an unwritten rule when it comes to controls for all genres. Sadly, Crysis 2’s control disappointed me. The biggest concern that turned me off quite a bit from this game was the grenade option. To throw a grenade, you must double tap Y on your 360 controller! For some, this may seem as nit-picking, however, this button allocation just seems awkward and makes throwing a grenade in a heated battle rather difficult.

Graphics, to any hardcore or dedicated gamer, is, by far, the most important aspect to any game, especially in the 21st century with an increasing number of players using HDTVs. I tested Crysis 2

on PC as well as Xbox 360 (sorry PS3 users) and I must admit: the graphics blew me away! There was so much detail in even the tiniest of items, such as the gravel beneath your feet, reflections in surfaces such as glass or puddles, insects flying through the air or crawling along the ground, or rays of sunshine coming through windows.

Overall, EA was successful with Crysis 2.

Although PC users may still experience some difficulty, EA has promised they are working hard at resolving any known issues.

Gamers will enjoy the simple story, advanced graphics, and excellent online multiplayer. For PC gamers, I would suggest perhaps waiting to purchase the game until issues have been fully resolved unless you wishing to play online immediately. Otherwise I would definitely suggest this game as the first on your list of must -haves! It was worth the wait!

What We Liked Fantastic graphics and detail Simple, yet captivating story Weaponry upgrade in multiplayer What We Hated PC issues still unresolved for all Awkward controls (Xbox 360 specific)

Buy

9.0

Homefront Platforms: OnLive, PC, PS3, Xbox 360 Genre: First-Person Shooter Publisher: THQ Developer: Kaos Studios, Digital Extreme Rating: M for Mature MSRP: $59.99

Homefront has all the marks of a good

FPS, but its beauty only runs skin deep.

Ultimately, it’s like an expensive date with a supermodel that ends with a drink thrown in your face.

Homefront is a great looking FPS, and the game starts promisingly by building a strong emotional investment. North Korea has become a superpower and occupies the US. North Korean military, dressed in high-tech body armor, roam the streets of U.S. neighborhoods rounding up civilians into trucks and forcing them into labor camps. Some civilians are executed. Children cry in the streets. You witness bits and pieces of this hellish occupation while riding on a bus during the game’s prologue. It works well. You can’t wait to get off the bus and remorselessly gun down enemy soldiers who have claimed all your bases as their own. Unfortunately, when the action kicks in, it doesn’t take long for the game to show its weaknesses.

For starters, you spend most of the game with a single objective: follow someone else. Even in the game’s sole stealth mission, you simply follow your AI teammates, sniping at enemies when and where you’re instructed to. This, combined with the game’s very restrictive “on rails” storytelling and map design, you never really get a chance to explore the world or step outside the game’s narrowly defined path.

Ultimately, you feel more like you’re being dragged through the game on a fish hook than you are driving the action.

Almost every mission puts you with an AI controlled team, all of whom are nigh in-

vulnerable and none of which ever become interesting as characters. Most of the game is spent following them to a specific point, and then completing an objective before they drag you along to another location. This is fine in the first 30 minutes or so of the tutorial. Unfortunately, it’s how you spend most of the game. The game even “invisible-walls” you, forcing you to wait for the character you're supposed to follow through an open doorway before it allows you to advance.

This occurred in several areas. Even worse, when you die and restart from a checkpoint, everything plays out identically. If the AI has any sort of dynamic, reactive intelligence, it is rarely seen. You just repeat the mission and complete the objectives until you get it right.

length of the average AAA first person shooter. After a mildly semi-climactic battle that feels like you just passed a key turning point in the game, you get a short in-game cut scene and then the credits roll… and then your “WTF?” rolls, too.

Homefront might be worth a $10 bargain-

bin pick-up if you have nothing better to play, but even its multiplayer isn't enough to make up for the single player game's brevity. Then again, even if the single player game was twice as long, Homefront still falls well short of games that inspired it.

Other problems plague the game as well.

One such example is that the tutorial frequently tells you to “press [BTN 5]” to do an action. What the hell is ‘BTN 5’?

Maybe we’re finicky, but PC gamers tend to prefer more specific information because of our 100+ key keyboards.

In addition, AI enemies seem to be more keenly accurate and aware of you than they should be, frequently firing at you before you’ve entered the area. Expect to die a lot, as you will often get shot and not know how or where you were shot from.

Other promising features also fall short.

There are a lot of different guns in the game, all of them pretty cool and interesting looking. Sadly, they all feel pretty much the same in terms of strength and firing characteristics. The vehicle segments in the game are mildly entertaining but nothing that hasn't been seen before, and better, in similar games.

The final punch in the face is Homefront's length: you can complete the single player game in less than 5 hours - about half the

What We Liked Nice weapon selection Graphics are very good What We Hated Zero innovation It’s 4 hours long

Pass

4.0

Gemini Rue Platform: PC Genre: Adventure Publisher: WadjetEye Games Developer: Joshua Nuernberger Rating: N/A

respite from seemingly impossible puzzles, which can then be tackled later on.

The overall plot is well done and is an excellent carrot to keep the player moving forward.

MSRP: $14.99

The backgrounds and rain effects are done in a pretty pixilated style. Character models are not detailed, but are distinguishable. The musical score is outstanding and sets the mood well. Sadly, most of the voice acting is awful. Character portraits that appear during conversation are poorly drawn and distracting, but both the voice and portraits can be disabled to give Gemini Rue an even more retro feel. The traditional point and click icons of old VGA adventure games are accounted for, but gracious hint text is also available. Try the wrong action on an object and the "no effect" dialog will often include an additional hint on what to do.

Gemini Rue is a new Indie Adventure game

that any point-and-click fan would feel doubly sorry to miss out on. This title has an odd mix of ancient and modern mechanics, beautiful drawing, terrible voice acting, and a strong plot. Together, it is a package that doesn't appeal to those that have no interest in the genre, but would be a strong experience to intrigued or veteran adventure gamers, thanks to the generous hint text and logical puzzles. The story follows two main player characters that can be toggled between. This offers

Instant death found in many old adventure games is also present, but so is a new auto-save feature that helps to keep players from frequent frustration.

Gemini Rue is easy to recommend to ad-

venture game fans who would appreciate a darker sci-fi story, but may come off as too easy for serious veterans, too mature for children, and too old school for anyone who has written off the genre in the past.

What We Liked Logical puzzles Gripping story Use "Gun" on "Man" What We Hated Voice acting Poorly detailed character portraits

Buy

8.0

You Don’t Know Jack Platforms: DS, DSi, PC, PS3, Wii, X360 Genre: Trivia Publisher: THQ Developer: Jellyvision Rating: T for Teen MSRP: $39.99

You Don't Know Jack is an irreverent and

excellent trivia game. Born from PC roots back in ‘95, YDKJ mixes clever humor, varied questions, and demeaning its players for the perfect party cocktail. The graphical presentation is top notch, fonts are clear while the questions are presented and read well, and the voice acting is excellent with Cookie Masterson returning to host. There is a variety of subjects and does a good job of mixing pop culture with older trivia knowledge, making the easy controls and broad subject matter easy to

Fate of the World Platform: PC Genres: Strategy, Simulation Publisher: Red Redemption Developer: Red Redemption Rating: No Rating MSRP: $9.99

pick up. There are a few other well received trivia games available, and YDKJ easily matches up to the competition.

The most recent entry from the series is available on most consoles, each with varying capabilities. The Xbox 360 version supports local and online play of up to 4 players, but not a mix of multiple local players brought online.

Online leaderboards track a wide variety of information and it is easy to get a match together to play with friends.

Playing in the same room is ultimately the best way to play; you can hear a player whimper on his headset, but you can't see him sweat.

As a trivia game, YDKJ has inheritably limited replay ability. The game is divided into 73 episodes and once you have played an episode you will know all the answers.

This will be the most important aspect in your buying decision: You Don't Know Jack

chasing agents in various regions, then playing cards to initiate projects or policies. Once you've purchased agents and played your cards, you advance five years and see the effects. On each turn, you'll be updated with any events and changes.

You can also monitor regional support— let it fall too low, and you'll be kicked out of the region, preventing you from interacting with it at all. If there's civil unrest, your agents might get kidnapped or killed!

In Fate of the World, you play as the head of a global organization charged with fixing the world’s socioeconomic, political, and ecological problems. It's what you might end up with if you left SimEarth, Excel, and The Economist in a room with the “does it blend” guy.

To be victorious, you must fulfill certain conditions. If you emerge victorious, it simply notifies you and drops you back at the main UI. There are many paths to choose when you're recruiting agents and playing your cards, but very few that lead to winning the scenario.

There are multiple scenarios, each unlocked by completing the previous one.

Your view is of the Earth, which you can use to inspect temperature, population, and geography. You affect change by pur-

The interface is simple and straightforward. The graphics, while not actionpacked, are certainly par to today's standards. The music and sound effects

is a fun trivia game that you can bring out casually with friends but lacks longevity compared to traditional video games. A DLC pack is already available featuring an additional ten episodes, and achievement hunting could also help draw this game out a bit. Ultimately, the decision on whether to buy or rent is decided on how quickly you think you want to burn through it with friends. The budget price helps me lean towards buy.

What We Liked Top notch graphical representation Excellent voice acting Varied subject matter What We Hated Limited replay ability Lack of local online multiplayer

Buy

6.5

are adequate, and obviously not overlooked, while the tutorial teaches you most aspects of the game, but not all.

Fate of the World could be a fun game if

you're really into global climate change, or complex simulations. For me, it was an exercise in frustration, as I repeatedly lost, and without a clue to prevent future failure. If that's your kind of thing, go check it out. If not, I'd skip it!

What We Liked Interesting concept Extremely quantitative Intentional global sabotage What We Hated Incomplete tutorial Too difficult to succeed Victory is unfulfilling

Pass

5.5

Battle: Los Angeles

Slam Bolt Scrappers

Beyond Good & Evil HD

Platform: XBLA Genres: Action, Adventure Publisher: Konami Developer: Live Action Studios Rating: T for Teen

Platform: PSN Genres: Puzzle, Action Publisher: Sony Online Entertainment Developer: Fire Hose Games Rating: E for Everyone

Platform: XBLA Genres: Action, Adventure, Shooter Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Ubisoft Rating: T for Teen

MSRP: 800 MSP

MSRP: $14.99

MSRP: 800 MSP

Battle: Los Angeles is the video game mirror to the recent box office hit of the same name. Often, a video game made to replicate a movie fails to hit the mark.

Battle: L.A., however, is not an exception to that rule.

New to the PlayStation Network is Slam Bolt Scrappers. In this Indie release, you use blocks to build a perfect square on a platform. Once a square is built, the player develops weapons, which can then be used to destroy the enemy’s tower.

Beyond Good & Evil is the 2011 remake of

After watching the movie, it is hard not to draw comparisons between the two. The movie is filled with phenomenal actors and a great story of alien colonisation. Sadly, the video game does not do the movie justice with its lackluster voice acting. It would have been nice, however farfetched, to have the actors from the movie voice their own characters in the game.

The game plays at about 2 hours, and although the game has many cuts scenes that build the characters in the movie, the story doesn’t suffer. However bad the voice acting, the dialogue provides vital pieces of the story and for your missions.

The game’s difficulty, even at the highest level, is not very challenging, but good news: if you’re an achievement hunter, this game practically gives you 200 gamerscore for doing nothing! However, the game’s short length, poor voice acting and overall lack of weapon choice does not warrant a purchase at its 800MSP tag.

The game features a great story packed into a short time, so if you’re in the mood for a quick arcade hit, wait for Battle: Los Angeles’ price tag to drop a little to pick up the game! It’ll be worth every minute!

To receive blocks, you must defeat baddies by punching them. This wouldn’t be a difficult task, except that you are being hit by 5-6 baddies at the same time, while your opponent is punching you, trying to steal your blocks and his or her weapons are firing at your blocks below! And that’s just on the easy mode!

To win the game, you must destroy the enemy’s tower before your tower is destroyed. So, with the onslaught I just mentioned, you can imagine how difficult it must be to place blocks without dying.

SBS doesn’t seem to follow a determined story, so gameplay mechanics are super important. To me, the overall difficulty and chaos was a huge turn-off. If the game focused more on just destroying the towers, and less on fighting your opponent, this game would be worth $15. Until then, wait for a price drop!

Very addicting casual game Reminiscent of Tetris Good graphics for an Indie game Too much chaos to focus on goal Confusing concept for beginners Story is either unclear or lacking

6.0

Pass

Overall, the game is quite the tale of good conquering evil. It is accompanied by rather decent voice acting and graphics.

However, at times the mission was often complicated or confusing. I will admit, even though an arcade game, I had to consult an online walkthrough to assist me with some of the missions.

Camera angles and controls are a huge factor in games. One might expect complex controls in an RPG, but not a simple arcade game. Often, the cameras were uncontrollable, and out of focus.

Although the game lacks replay ability, and the overall camera issues were quick to turn me away, the great story and fun mini-games kept me engaged!

Great story, with good voice acting Good game length, at about 12-13 hrs Fun side quests, and mini-games What We Hated

What We Hated

What We Hated Lackluster voice acting Poor weapon variations Very short game length

BG&E takes you on a journey of good vs. evil, as the name suggests, with the gamer playing as Jade. She and her partner, Pey’j, suspect the Alpha Sections are behind some recent disappearances. Jade discovers the Alpha Sections are being controlled by the DomZ, and so begins her adventure to the DomZ lunar base. Along the way, you must complete several missions or quests, including collecting pearls, freeing a captured Pey’j, and defeating guards.

What We Liked

What We Liked

What We Liked Features a great story Lots of action throughout game Easy to obtain achievements

Pass

Upon review of the “How to Play” guide, I was rather confused. There are 7 types of blocks and 6 power ups, each of a different color. At first glance, this seems overwhelming. Thankfully, it becomes less confusing the more you play the game.

the Xbox original of the same title, which did not make a good impression upon release in 2003, due to poor timing. 8 years later, this game is becoming a hit with XBLA gamers, and soon, PSN fans, too!

6.0

Terrible camera control Lacks replay ability

Buy

8.0

Polynesia

DaVinci Disappearance

Jill and Shuma-Gorath

Game: Civilization V Price: $4.99 DLC Type: Expansion Value: High

Game: AC: Brotherhood Price: $9.99, 800 MSP DLC Type: Expansion Value: High

Game: MvC3 Price: $4.99, 400 MSP DLC Type: Characters Value: Moderate

Download

Download

Download The Civilization franchise, which is nearly two decades old and has sold millions of copies, continues to churn out new content. The latest instalment of gamer fodder comes in the form of the Polynesia Civilization and Scenario Pack for Civilization V. The new civilization gets bonuses that come in handy early in the game, particularly if you're playing an archipelago map. The scenario Paradise Found pits you against three other Polynesian opponents, all vying for a cultural victory.

Polynesia gets the Wayfinding ability, which allows your units to embark into coastal and ocean tiles immediately, without having to discover optics or astronomy. Once embarked, all Polynesian units can see one tile further. You also get the Maori Warrior, who imposes a combat penalty to adjacent enemies. Finally, you get the Moai coastal tile improvement, granting a combat bonus to nearby units.

In Paradise Found, your goal is to be the first of four Polynesian civilizations to adopt all eighteen custom social policies.

However, the culture goal for new policies doesn't increase with the number of cities, so you're free to expand aggressively without dragging down your rate of policy adoption.

I really enjoyed playing the new civilization and its leader, Kamehameha. Having the ability to set sail and explore the seas from turn one can really make a difference, and at under five bucks it's a great way to increase your Civilization V power level to over nine thousand!

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: The Da Vinci Disappearance is the first premium

DLC release for the newest AC title. Previous DLC were released as free multiplayer enhancements, however, this pack contains more than a new maps and game modes. The new single player missions are unlocked and played after the main game, and also include Animus Update 3.0, with new characters, maps, and modes. This DLC pack also includes the Collector's Edition exclusive DLC, two new Templar Lairs, and both pre-order retailer-specific multiplayer skins (the Harlequin and the Officer), as well as the Drachen armor. It is a very nice gesture to bundle all previously exclusive content rather than releasing and charging separately for it.

The new missions are lengthy and well planned. Initially it is easy to obtain 100% sync, but the later missions become a bit trickier in their requirements, including one which forbids the use of rooftops. The new environments offer a fresh artistic take, and one of which, a mansion, is particularly beautiful to sneak through. Additionally, there are details regarding the story of Ezio Auditore's life in this chapter, with more mysterious plot discovered and more yet left unrevealed. New achievements can also keep you busy hunting: ranging from new open world tasks to getting 100% sync.

While Assassin's Creed'’s first premium DLC does not set the world ablaze, if you enjoyed your romp through AC: Brotherhood and want more, I definitely recommend firing it up.

Jill and Shuma-Gorath have been announced for a good while now, but weren’t released until a few weeks after the game came out. I can’t really say why, they came out awfully quickly after release, but were not packaged with it, which leaves me a bit curious.

Anyway, they are out now and up for download. They are both interesting characters and can help round out teams, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say there’s anything particularly great about them.

However, the rub lies in that you kind of need to get them. Chances are that most people playing MvC3 probably play a pretty good amount of it. If you just sit at home and are completely happy with the other characters, you may as well pass. On the other hand, that seems pretty unlikely. If you go to tournaments, like playing with your friends, playing online, or just dislike losing, you pretty much need to pony up the money and grab them. Even if you don’t play as them, you’ll have them as options in the future. The biggest reason is that it’s quite difficult to play against a character when you have no idea what they are capable of, what mix ups they may have, etc. It’s not impossible to learn to play against them without ever playing as them (even if you just did so in Mission Mode), but MvC3 can be frustrating enough as it is. It would take a lot of time and effort to simply pick up strategies against them just by facing off with them online.

If you happened to pick up the collector’s edition, you already have a code for them, but if not, it’s probably in your best interest to get the pack downloaded and start learning the basics of Jill and Shuma. $5 is a little more than I’d hope Capcom would charge, but it’s not really a surprise either, as they have made that their standard with SSF4. Unless the game is just collecting dust on your shelf, head online and grab the character pack.

41

Raptor Gaming M3X Manufacturer: Raptor Product Type: Gaming mouse Target Consumer: PC gamer Buy From: http://frag.gs/m3x MSRP: $59.99 The newly released M3X gaming mouse is the latest gaming mouse from German gaming peripheral maker, Raptor Gaming.

The M3X has a good feature set and it's certainly comfortable, but a critical, physical design flaw quickly makes it irritating and annoying to use.

On paper, the M3X feature set is good and looks attractive at a $70 price point.

The M3X is reminiscent of an improved, streamlined version of Rude Gameware’s Fierce 3200 gaming mouse. Here’s a rundown of the M3X's technical specifications:

     

Laser sensor capable of 8 DPI presets including: 400, 800, 1200, 1600, 2000, 2400, 3600, 4800 Top-mounted color-changing LED to indicate the DPI level Adjustable weight via 5 different weights that can be inserted into the mouse (ca. 110gr. – ca. 140gr.)

Rubberized soft-touch surface 7 total (non programmable) buttons Additional sets of adhesive mouse sliders

Long, slim buttons along the side of the mouse serve as forward/back buttons for surfing. The small button below the DPI LED indicator cycles the DPI setting.

Another small button to the left of the scroll wheel is assigned to ‘permanent fire’ according to the manual, which also doesn't explain what that is. None of the buttons on the M3X are programmable.

The Raptor M3X is a right-handed, ergonomic mouse and it’s definitely comfortable, with a soft-touch rubberized surface that fits nicely to your right hand, particularly if you have hands that are larger than average.

The only minor downside to the shape of the mouse is that its shape makes it difficult to pick up if you happen to run off the mouse mat or need to reposition it for any reason. The DPI dedicated buttons are all well-positioned and within easy reach, although wider thumb buttons would be an improvement.

Sadly, none of this really matters because the M3X simply doesn't perform well. Out of the box, everything about the Raptor M3X looks and feels good and appropriate to a $70 gaming mouse, but it becomes annoying and frustrating before you even get into a game.

The M3X suffers from a critical design flaw that makes it wobble or rock back and forth when the left-mouse button is clicked. The wobble is minor but enough to make your pointer jittery, particularly at higher DPI settings in Windows. In-game,

the M3X performs better in as much as the pointer’s jittery behavior isn’t as noticeable, but nothing will make that rocking go away. In action/FPS games, the M3X's deficiencies aren't as noticeable generally speaking, but high precision movements, such as sniping, it becomes more noticeable.

At best the M3X proves irritating, at worst, it gets you fragged. Sure, you could potentially use the additional, adhesive sliders that are included with the M3X to offset its instability and make it steady, but even if this works, you don’t drop $70+ on a new gaming mouse to compromise and put up with irritating behavior.

Overall, the best thing about the M3X gaming mouse is the travel bag that comes with it. Otherwise, it's shortcomings are completely unacceptable. Alternately, you could always recommend this mouse to your gaming ‘frenemies’.

What We Liked Nice travel bag Good feature set Fairly low price point What We Hated Physically wobbles on mouse press Difficult to grasp and move Not programmable

Pass

3.5

Razer Ferox Manufacturer: Razer Product Type: Portable speakers Target Consumer: Everyone Buy From: http://frag.gs/ferox MSRP: $59.99 The Razer Ferox portable speakers boast big sound for a pair of speakers that are barely bigger than a standard computer mouse, and they are outstanding audioenhancing companions for virtually any portable media players such as iPods, iPhones, Android phones, and gaming laptops.

Each Ferox speaker is only a little larger than your average racquetball, and connects to your PC through a 3.5mm jack. A short USB cable is also included to connect to your PC to charge the batteries, which are rated at roughly 12 hours of life between charges.

Each speaker looks like a tiny R2-style Star Wars droid. Press the top of each speaker and the ‘head’ of the speaker pops up slowly about a quarter inch, and a blue LED ring along the bottom of the speaker lights up to let you know the speaker is turned on.

The technical specifications for the Ferox are as follows:

        

Frequency Response: 150Hz-20KHz Drivers: 30mm neodymium magnets Up to 12 hours playback time LED battery status indicator Battery voltage/capacity: 470mAh 3.5mm audio jack & USB Loudspeaker Output: 2 x 3W Carrying case included Approximate size: 70 mm (length) x 70mm (width) x 53 - 64 mm (height)

The Ferox speakers may not boast Boselevel audio power, but they do produce good, clear sound. The bass won’t blow you away, but the Ferox do a good job of producing clear high and mid-level tones.

The bass is respectable and certainly on par with, or superior to, most laptops and certainly better than any mobile media player’s tiny built-in speaker.

I put the Ferox speakers through some paces on a recent vacation to Maui, which included 2 laptops, an iPod, and 2 Droid phones. On my gaming laptop, I played a few games and played a variety of media files, movies, and other music, all of which sounded quite good. I also cranked the volume levels as high as I could in an effort to push the Ferox speakers, but they handled everything I threw at them without distortion or other issues.

They also proved useful for enhancing the audio for songs played from my Droid Incredible, and my wife used them to listen to audio books through her iPod, (which she told me “she loved” at which point I yelled, “Look! A whale!” and quickly stole them back from her (wives have a way of making your stuff their stuff).

Overall, the Ferox speakers look cool, sound very good and come with their own carrying case that’s not much bigger than a large computer mouse. Their real strength is in their versatility: they can work equally well with virtually any device that accepts a 3.5mm jack, their battery life is quite good (my wife kept leaving them on for extended periods), and they’re polite, space-efficient companions.

If you’re frequently on the go, technologyladen, and could use a little audio enhancement, the Ferox Speakers are excellent traveling companions, and a pretty good deal at around $60.

What We Liked Shape is compact and versatile Great sound They look like Star Wars Droids What We Hated Not as powerful as other speakers

Buy

9.0

Sonar Championship 5.1 Manufacturer: Cyber Snipa Product Type: Headset Target Consumer: Gamers/Audiophiles Buy From: http://frag.gs/sonar MSRP: $79.95 The newly released Cyber Snipa Sonar Championship 5.1 gaming headset proves it can hold its own in the gaming headset arena with quality audio, a wealth of customization options, memory-foam comfort, and a reasonable price.

The headset connects via USB and is equipped with a total of 8 individual drivers (4 in each ear cup) to produce its 5.1 directional audio. In addition, it comes with an inline controller with separate volume adjustments for its Bass, Front, Center, and Rear Drivers (along with mic mute). Combined with the Sonar 5.1 software, which provides an 11-channel equalizer and acoustic effects, the Sonar 5.1 offers plenty of customization options for those that like fine control over their audio and the ability to adjust it to suit different types of content.

The headband is plastic construction with memory foam-lined ear cups and head band. The microphone is long and very flexible, easy to position for optimal reception or out of the way when not in use. It does its job well. The Sonar 5.1 also includes a very nice, sturdy travel bag complete with Velcro strap organizers. It will certainly help protect the headset, but it's pretty large and not something you'd want to take if you were trying to travel lightly.

The ear cups and head band are lined with a soft, comfortable memory foam that stays cool even after extended wear—the Sonar 5.1 doesn't seem as prone to give you “hot head” after a couple of hours, which isn't uncommon in leather-lined or standard cloth ear cups.

The Sonar 5.1 is reasonably light and generally quite comfortable, although it feels like it could (or should) be a little tighter, even when adjusted to optimal size for the wearer. The headphones provide virtually no external noise suppression, but they can get plenty loud enough to compensate.

The Cyber Snipa Sonar 5.1 Championship headset sports a strong feature set, above average directional audio and comfort, and a wealth of audio customization options all for a very reasonable street price of around $80. If you're in the market (and this price range), definitely check them out.

The lighted, inline controller includes separate volume adjustments for the Front, Rear, Center, and Bass drivers. This is a welcomed feature, not to mention the first time I've seen it in any of the headsets I've reviewed. It would be nice if the controller were better lighted though. A single orange stripe lights the inline controller so it’s easy to find in the dark.

Unfortunately, you can’t see the controller well enough to see what you’re adjusting, so you better memorize its layout.

The only other minor (potential) weakness in the Sonar 5.1 is its all-plastic construction, which feels a little cheap and includes its headband. It should hold up well enough to typical PC gaming, but it’s probably just one overzealous Rottweiler or preschooler away from a plasticstrewn headset apocalypse.

The headset promises a lot on paper and it generally delivers. The directional audio proved reliable in helping to detect special infected in games of Left 4 Dead 2 and avoid an unfortunate “Booming” or a pouncing by a Hunter.

For other applications, the Sonar 5.1’s audio is quite good, though not on par with the likes of Creative Labs’ THXpowered Tactic 3D headsets. The Sonar 5.1's biggest weakness seems to be bass, which feels a little underwhelming and tinny. Tweaking it through the control panel and inline controller helps offset this weakness, but the Sonar 5.1 could definitely benefit from a little more thump (bigger bass drivers).

What We Liked Good directional audio Comfortable Low price What We Hated Underwhelming bass Can feel a bit loose on your head Quite large travel bag

Buy

7.5

Chameleon X-1 Manufacturer: Shogun Bros.

Product Type: mouse, controller, remote Target Consumer: PC gamers and users Buy From: http://frag.gs/chameleon

DPI up and down and the forward/back function in a web browser. Don’t expect to make much use of them—at least in mouse mode.

MSRP: $59.99

As a gaming mouse, it’s obvious that the X-1 isn’t in the same league as wired and wireless mice such as Logitech’s G700 or others is another matter. Its key power is its flexibility: click a tiny switch at the tip of the mouse to lock the mouse buttons, turn the X-1 over, and then press the start button for 3 seconds to switch the Chameleon X-1 into a fully functional wireless gamepad, with twin thumb sticks, a d -pad, and 10 buttons. If that isn’t enough, the Chameleon X-1 even has something to offer mobile workers—it can function as a wireless media remote so you can control Media Players or PowerPoint presentations.

Manufactured by Hong Kong based company, Shogun Bros, the Chamleon X-1 gaming mouse may be the most innovative gaming mouse to ever grace a desktop or laptop bag. The Chameleon X-1 gaming mouse pulls triple-duty as a wireless gaming mouse, a wireless gamepad, and a media remote, and it actually handles each of those tasks rather well.

The Chameleon X-1 is modest but capable.

It comes with a tiny 2.4 GHz wireless USB receiver, with a size similar to the type used by Logitech wireless devices.

It’s very small, stores inside the mouse for travel, and it’s perfect for laptops because it doesn’t jut out from the USB port by more than a few millimeters. It features 5 DPI presets that include 400, 800, 1000, 1200, and 1600 DPI settings; generally a good range for gaming (the 1000-1600 range is arguably the “sweet spot”) though certainly not in the same league as the powerful sensors of high-end gaming mice.

The X-1 is also limited to 125Hz polling rate, which might be good for battery life but falls short of the sensitivity and responsiveness of higher-end mice, which typically offer 250Hz, 500Hz, or 1000Hz polling rates. The Chameleon X-1 runs off a single AA battery, and it goes to "sleep" if it idles for more than a few minutes to save battery life. Unlike some newer wireless mice, the X-1 doesn't include a USB cable (for charging) or support a dualmode wired/wireless option.

On the far-side of the X-1 are 4 completely awkward buttons that are preconfigured for two functions: turning the

A cynic may say that it’s amazing that the Chameleon X-1 doesn’t suck, but the bottom line performance-wise is that the Chameleon X-1 is generally adequate at both of its functions, which is a pretty significant achievement. It may not rule your desktop, but it makes a pretty decent travel companion for mobile gaming.

Compared to dedicated peripherals, the X -1 is no match for a good gaming mouse from the likes of SteelSeries or Razer, or a good wireless PC gamepad from Logitech, but as a convenient travel companion that pulls triple duty as a gaming mouse, gamepad, and media remote, the X-1 shines. Compared to dedicated devices, the X-1 is inferior across all three categories, but it does a lot and doesn’t demand more space than a standard mouse.

The X-1 is a perfectly comfortable, if unexceptional, right-handed mouse. The 4 buttons on the far side of the mouse are awkward to reach and use in mouse mode, but function reasonably well as bumper/trigger buttons in gamepad mode.

As a gamepad, the X-1 isn’t as uncomfortable as you might expect. It cradles reasonably well in your hands, though its mousy shape makes it a little easy to lose your grip. Regardless, the X-1 wasn’t as nearly drop or slip-prone as imagined, and it actually functioned fairly well in play sessions of Assassin’s Creed 2.

The bumper/trigger buttons would be better if they were more ergonomically shaped for thumbs instead of conforming to the mouse’s shape. It might even improve their functionality slightly as extra mouse buttons.

The X-1 is not a replacement for a fullsized, dedicated gamepad, but it still functions as an adequate replacement that removes the overhead of the additional desktop/storage space for one.

What We Liked Triple use: mouse, controller, remote Small in size; easy to travel with Has many capabilities and functions What We Hated Limited to 125Hx polling rate Some buttons are hard to reach Only wireless; wired option not avail.

Buy

7.0