10 Minutes Of Starcraft 2 – Heart Of The Swarm

Well it’s not really 10 minutes, but it’s a 10 minute long video with comments and in game photage. It’s looking awesome I tell ya.

Heroes of Newerth – A New Review

It’s time to do this once again! Last time I wrote a review on Heroes Of Newerth was during the beta of the game. Back then I had hardly played any DotA and I wasn’t a big fan of how it played and worked. I was soon to be blown away by a game much like it. For some of you that know of both these games, you will see that HoN is a clone of DotA, in game style and even down to several of the heroes. Even if they have been rebalanced and changed to fit the meta game within HoN.

QUCIK “ABOUT”
So, HoN is a multiplayer game where you and 4 others go up against 5 other players. Imagine tower defense, now imagine this in a RTS kind of looking game, where you see everything from above. Imagine three different roads to the enemy base. These roads need to be pushed down past enemy towers to eventually destroy the base. While you and the other players control a unique hero to help your team, taking different roles as support, tank, ganker, carry and so on. Killing enemy heroes and destroying their buildings will give you and your team gold and XP, this is used to advance your skills and buy items for your hero.

GRAPHICS
The graphics are great, they work well for this type of game and even if that means that the graphics aren’t great, it works. Each hero has a unique look and feel to them. Graphics isn’t really the important thing of the game, it works, it fits it, certain things look better and certain things look worse. Most people will look at this game and compare to DotA, and because of that, this game wins the graphic race. Not a big surprise seeing how old DotA and Warcraft 3 actually are.

CONTROLS
The controls are simple, you click where you want your hero to move, and you use Q, W, E and R to use your 4 different abilities. You don’t need much experience for the basics of the controls, try them out once and you should be set to play the game. The difference between a good and a great player in HoN, is how you control your hero. How you use your skills in the game, how you cooperate with the other players and communication with other players and so on. What you really need to set your mind into is the short keys, or hot keys. How to use your items quickly without the hassle of moving around with the mouse in important situations like team fights.

THE COMMUNITY
One thing that you should know before running in to this game is; the community isn’t nice. This game thrives on team work, the better you and your team works together the bigger chance you have of winning. This makes HoN (and any game like it) a horrible place for new players, while learning the basics, you will be facing a lot of “bullshit” from people in the game. There’s always a lot of hate pointed at players doing bad, and I hope that most new players can look past that. As soon as you get into it a bit more, there’s a great game to find behind the wall of “NOOB!”.

THOUGHTS
HoN isn’t DotA, but for any player out there that plays one or the other, they will be able to try the other game and understanding it quickly. As it is now, HoN gets a new hero every two weeks, mostly they also fix and change different items and setting within the game to balance it out. One important thing to notice is that this is NOT a game that requires you to spend money on it after the first 30$ like many other games like it. There are several cosmetic and sound options that can be bought, but these are also available with the in game money you earn for playing. All heroes and items are available at all times, so it never turns the balance if someone spent more money on the game then you did.

Heroes of Newerth is the kind of game that you may not be sure if you like at first, and when you sit back and look at the time you will realize that you spent 2-3 hours playing it. It’s an addicting game and it constantly changes thanks to the huge pool of heroes. There are currently 80 heroes in the game, and you only use 10 heroes each game, and a different mix every time. Yea… there will be a different feel every game.

CONCLUSION
HoN is a addicting game with a fun type of game play. The community is harsh towards new players that don’t know the game as well as them, but as soon as the noob barrier is passed the game will be a lot more rewarding. Team work games have always been major part of what I enjoy what in comes to online games, and HoN really puts that to test. Can you work together to defeat the enemy team? You will always feel great when a plan works just as you imagined it, or when you escape death with only a little health.

New players may find it slow and even at times hard if you haven’t played a game like it before. But the more you learn and the better you get, you will understand that every moment in the game is important if you want it to run in your favor.

Good
+ Constantly evolving with new heroes and updates
+ Addictive game play
+ Team Work

Bad
- The community
- Hard to get into for a completely new player
- Balance in the game can switch quickly to the worse with so many new heroes and updates

APB RELOADED – BETA REVIEW

Thieves and cops, gangsters and peacekeepers, bad guys and good guys, all jammed together in one huge open beta package. APB is an action packed MMORPG game, and you take the role of a criminal or a cop. Lets’ start out with the basics now shall we.

THE BASICS
As I mentioned, the first thing you need to decide on is if you want to fight for crime or peace. The difference mostly being what kind of weapons and gear you get, the characters you meet during the “story” and cosmetics. Once decided you get to create your character, and this is vast, if you’ve played any game like fallout 3 or Mass Effect, you will know what I’m talking about. I will actually mention more on this later, let’s just skip ahead for now.

After you’ve created your character you will enter a Tutorial world, were you get to try the game out, I advise you to stay here for a bit and learn the controls and how the game works. Training on your aiming and movement, because it will decide if you live or die in missions once you enter the proper game.

The world is filled with different characters that are bound to the game, these are located in different hubs where you can get ammo, your personal car, check your email and buy new weapons and gear. By pledging to one of these characters you will be able to level up your connection with that person. The more missions you complete while pledged, the character will send you emails, get you new equipment and finally: prefer you to new characters in the world. This is how you unlock your way to harder missions and more of everything APB!

THE PLAYSTYLE / THE MISSIONS
The game is essentially made with a mix of RPG and 3d person action games. If you’ve played a lot of GTA you will quickly recognize yourself in the play style and handling of your character. You run around in a sandbox world with other players from both sides of the spectrum of good and evil. There are also plenty of different cars and civilians in the world which makes this feel even more like GTA (in a good way).

When you feel ready, you can easily start looking for missions, in a group of buddies or alone. Missions are found by simply clicking “ready”, after a few seconds a random mission will start fitting to your level. You will be informed where you need to go and what to do, and at the same time, a team or player from the opposing side will get a mission to stop you. There are several different missions and they will change somewhat depending on how long you’ve come with the different characters in the game.

The system can be somewhat awkward at first, you will be confused and shot down often in the first few attempts at these missions. The longer you stick with it the more fun you will have, you will learn how the fighting takes place, how to shoot and where to hide with the biggest chance of winning a firefight. The biggest problem I have with the system is how they pair you with enemy teams and other players. At times you will be playing against people that have a huge level and equipment advantage. The good thing is that it doesn’t mean you’re going to lose automatically, it just means that you will need to try a lot harder to win.

CUSTOMIZE
This game is HUUUUUUUUUUGE on customization! You can change the color and design of your clothes, fill your skin with tattoos and scars, make a personal design for your car and even a personal music theme that plays every time you kill someone or win a mission. APB Reloaded love to show this off and it even allows you to sell your designed items on a market for in game money.

The customizing of your character and clothes and cars even got its’ own world within the game. The social area, which is made just for you show of your creations, sell them and create new ones. If you’re a design freak, this will open a whole new experience for you when it comes to character customization.

CONTROLS & GRAPHICS
I’m not really going to go far in to this, the controls are what they are for this kind of game. You can sprint, sit, stand, reload, use grenades and items and the more hotkeys and short commands you learn the better. The controls works fine for what it is and I really can’t see how it could have been done better than it is now. The only real problems with the controls are the fact that you get a lot of delay at the times when the servers are a bit busy. But it works.

The graphics are also great… to look at that is. The problem right now is the few graphic bugs that can occur, like invisible walls that all of a sudden turn in to a building. You will quickly learn where this happens and how to work around it, but it’s still something that needs to be fixed.

SO REALLY
If you want a good story and missions that take you further in some kind of singe player mode, this is not a game for you. If you like a good action MMO with a lot of customization and a fun experience with other players this is it. You need to remember that this game is still in a beta version of it new self. There are some graphic issues and lag when the servers start to fill up. The game is FUN and that’s the most important thing when it comes to a game that I just got for free. If I have fun with it, the small errors and bugs can stay. Of course they’re working hard to remove them in the future.
The feel of cooperating with your friends on missions and roaming in a modern town world is great. The lag is still the biggest issue for me, a tip is to roam the world a bit before starting up missions so that it can load up properly. The lag shouldn’t be to much of a problem after that.
I will recommend everyone to try this game, it’s free to try and download and if you end up not liking it, just uninstall it.

Good
+ Customizing
+ Fun co-op like game play
+ GTA like world

Bad
- Lag
- More vehicles please

/Nurgle

APB Reloaded – Free Beta Up

Remember that MMO game that shortly after release was shutdown, don’t remember the exact reason for it or how long the game actually was up. But I do remember looking at the news about it thinking: to bad on something that looked so cool.

Well I’m sitting here now regretting that, cause… because of that its now free. Yes you heard me, a game that took years to develop by a proper company has now been reworked and released for free. Well, not properly released yet, it’s still in the BETA, but a BETA of a game that used to cost around 50$? I’m okay with that.

The game is an action based MMO, if you want to go to the deepest basics of it. It’s basically Cop Vs Thief, in one awesome looking world. Does anyone remember the multiplayer from GTA IV? It was okay but compared to the whole single player game it sadly fell short. Well APB takes it one step further.

To download the game go to: http://www.gamersfirst.com/apb/
And for “info” go to: http://www.gamersfirst.com/

Right now the game looks and feels awesome, getting some friends on there will most probably make it even more fun. I’m not saying it’s perfect, I’m not saying that you can vote on this for the best game of the year. But, it’s a FREE MMO, with great potential.

Review, comin up!

/Nurgle