Platforms: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3

Release Date: February 7^th, 2012

While most RPG’s today tend to rehash the old and tiresome play, the developers of this game sought out to change that.  Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning seeks to breathe new life into a genre that is quickly melding into the same bland old style.

Big Huge Games, who is developing this game, wants to make single player RPG’s fun again. How are they doing this? Well, simple. They’re giving the control back to you. They’re not restricting you to choose a class and stick with it the rest of your character life. They give you awesome weapons and armor and then let your character kick ass with them and look good doing it. Finally, they let you do all this in a massive world with seemingly endless quests.  I’ll explain…

Move Over Classes, Make Room for Destinies

Pretty much every PC RPG game that comes out the gates these days lets you choose from a short list of classes and then forces you focus on that one class the entire game. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has devised a brand new class based system, called Destinies. Destinies are not chosen at the beginning, but earned as you level up and progress through the game.

While you are leveling, your character gains ability points to spend in three basic trees; Might, Finesse and Sorcery. Each tree is filled with unique and appealing abilities that enhance your characters power, combat maneuvers and passive abilities. As you spend those points, the game rewards you with equippable Destiny Cards. Destiny cards give your character a class title and award you stat bonuses and sometimes additional combat maneuvers to make your play style even more powerful and fun.

There are 40 different destinies you can acquire and every one is a viable and fun play style. You can swap out destinies at any time in the game. Should you also decide you are not happy with how you spent your ability points, you can visit your local Fateweaver and for a cost, reset all of your points and start fresh.

Finally! Awesome Combat and RPG Mechanics in One Game

In the past, you pretty much have a game that either has crappy RPG Mechanics but awesome combat or visa versa. Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning may well be the title to successfully marry these elements into one awesome game. I have to admit; watching the combat videos from Reckoning leaves me breathless at times.

Every nuance of movement has been scrutinized for natural flow, enemy AI is interesting and unique, and the special effects are quite appealing. If I only mention one weapon style that has impressive flow and effects, it has to be the chakrams. These are circular blades that when thrown seem to have a life of their own and truly have to be seen to be fully appreciated.

Attacks are controlled by just a few buttons or keystrokes but combos are employed by your timing of those buttons. You have variances in attacks by timing and what position the character is in at the moment. The game boasts to have a very natural and easy feel to it. No matter which general play style you are using (Might, Sorcery or Finesse), all of them are very engaging combat. It’s not your typical pull, spam attack button until dead and repeat, it’s much more challenging where oftentimes you have to manage multiple enemies of differing types with varying strengths and weaknesses forcing you to crowd control is.

200+ Hours Play! Oh yeah!

It was stated by the Lead Designer, Ian Frazier, that they had a competition to have the game testers and developers attempt to complete every single quests as fast as they possibly could on speed running and nothing else. The fastest time to do this was just over 200 hours. That should give you some idea of the scale of the size of this world and just how much there is to do in it.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning takes place in the massive open world of Amalur, during the Age of Arcana. Amalur has a history comprised of 10,000 years of unique and compelling lore fathered by New York Times Bestselling Author, R. A. Salvatore. The writers have entwined this lore, with strict adherence to Salvatore’s writings, in every facet of this game to characters, settings and of course quests. There is the main quest line that threads throughout the game, 6 major faction quest lines each with their own involved and compelling stories, and hundreds, if not thousands, of side quests to immerse yourself in.

Other key elements to the open world worth noting is the game comes with fast travel, player housing, sneaking, traps, hidden objects and doors, lockpicking, full day/night cycles, crafting systems, combat with a bow, a slim moral system, crime and punishment, no in-depth character romance, hundreds of unique armor sets and weapons, a prefix/suffix item generator system with millions of possibilities, and hundreds of hand-crafted dungeons.

My advice to you is to pry your fingers away from that tired old RPG genre you’re playing and watch a few videos of this game. I’m confident you’ll be as excited about it as I am.

Read my full article filled with videos, pictures and information about Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

Patrick Dunkley

RPGReviewer.com

I want to compile a comprehensive list of the best games from the 1990′s. Then we’re gonna put them in a show down to find out what your favourite game was.

Pop your favourite game(s) in the comments below.

Here are YOUR top 5.

5 – Divinity II: Ego Draconis

From the website:

Following the lineage of these two much-acclaimed RPGs, Divinity II: Ego Draconis has adapted many of the most famous elements that made these two original games classics. Divinity II: Ego Draconis makes use of the same classless system that was incorporated in Divine Divinity, which allows you to choose your own path as you become a Dragon Knight.

4 – Fallout: New Vegas

Bethesda’s only RPG release for 2010 made it’s way into the top 5 games. I was surprised that it didn’t rank higher though. I believe many gamers felt that they just ended up with an expansion for Fallout 3 which visually it did seem like that. However, gameplay and story wise it was classic Fallout thanks to the development team being largely from Obsidian Entertainment. Definitely worth checking out.

3 – World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

It’s not surprising that the third World of Warcraft expansion found it’s way to the top 3. The sheer number of WoW gamers was sure to give it’s placing a nice boost. This expansion, like the others, threw the game in it’s head with several new features such as Goblins and Worgens, new raid options and completely changed maps.

2 – Mass Effect 2

Mass Effect 2 scraped in at a close second. Bioware did a great job at responding to community suggestions from the first Mass Effect and fixing annoying things like the inventory system. They did however add that really annoying probe mining system that had a way of chewing up gaming time that you really wanted to spend blowing bad dudes up. A great looking game, I look forward to taking on the Repears in Part 3.

1 – Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening

There it is, number one… and it’s an expansion. It’s not surprising that the expansion to the highest rated game of 2009 would take place as the best PC RPG of 2010. Building off the enthralling story of Dragon Age: Origins, Awakening throw’s your character right back into the fray. Apparently the Darkspawn are NOT dead so you have to quest again to defeat them once more. A must play, but be sure to play Dragon Age: Origins first.

Below is a list of all the games I can think of that came out last year. I’ve also included expansions because groups like Blizzard include a lot of extra content in their expansions.

Vote away!

To prove this, Bethblog announced that Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will feature a Creation Kit which will give users the ability to tap into the new “Creation Engine” featured by Skyrim. The Creation Kit will feature a lot of tools that the Construction Kit featured in Morrowind and Oblivion.

Game Informer has given an in-depth summary of what you can expect from this new tool. You can read it here.

If you haven’t heard much about Skyrim you can view more on the official website here and watch the teaser trailer below.

Lives of youngsters circulate around very few things. A youngster may give importance to his studies, may love the company of his family and friends, he may have a habit of using internet, listening songs, watching movies, and yes he would definitely have a taste for games. Games are actually a very integral matter in a youngster’s life. Any youngster who may belong to any stereotype will have some taste in game as there are several types of games for everyone.

There are many genres of games that are available in the market. There are games of wars, skills, mystery, arcade and several other categories.

Games are played by youngsters and young adults because they want to have a great time. They take games as their hobby or sometimes as their favorite passion. But, however, these people do not know that these games are actually very much advantageous in several ways. Games are not just past time, they can actually pay you off greatly.

Gaming consoles have given a new meaning to the world of games. With gaming consoles in hand, a person can take as many of advantages as he wants, there are many possibilities. Following are some of the advantages that a person may get if he is willing to.

• Multidimensional Knowledge. When a person plays a game in the gaming console, he mostly has to take in some avatar to do so. There are games a man may take avatar of a cop, doctor, designer, farmer, businessman, commando and several other profiles. This teaches man the lifestyle and the profile of every profession he takes as an avatar. He learns various things through which he may learn a lot about them and this leads to gain in his knowledge through multidimensional way. Through these games he may get to be whatever he wants to be, and may live several lives in a single game.
• Enhancement of Skills. There are many games that enhance the skills of the man. He may actually learn farming, some ins and outs of business and many other things.

The skills enhancement does not stop here, a man can actually learn a lot out of the box too. Gaming consoles have brought many blessings with it. There are many ways that a person may learn new skills from. A person may not only learn skills but he may actually earn money from it too. There are two popular ways to do so. The person may go for the game testing jobs through which he may be appointed from different companies to play and test the games and then he will be paid! Then there are the repair jobs like Xbox 360 repair job. A person may learn how to do Xbox 360 repair from internet and personal experience and then may earn money by fixing gaming consoles for other people.

If a person may think out of the box then a simple gaming console can teach him a lot and can actually pay him off!

Welcome to the June 27, 2010 edition of RPG PC Games.

Jane Spiegel presents Online Casino Nachrichten aktuell über ganze Internet Glücksspiel Industrie! posted at Online Casino Spiegel, saying, “Online Casino Spiegel – is your World of Gambling Related News. You will find all necessary up to date information about gambling: casino, poker, sport bets, backgammon, blackjack, roulette etc. Periodically you can read articles about gambling history, luckiest winners, strategies and so on.”

Jane Spiegel presents 6 Reasons Why Online Casinos are a Good Choice of Gambling posted at Online Casino Mirror, saying, “Reviews on Best Online Casinos with free online casino bonus codes. Casino news and promotions of online casino games.”

aiwendel presents Long List of MMORPGs posted at TubeBlogger, saying, “A pretty long list of top mmorpg games, in alphabetical order, with gameplay videos and a quick description of the game.”

Humour

Josh Andrews presents Win a Roku Box!! Father’s Day Contest posted at SuperCoolSteals, saying, “Father’s Day Contest. Win a Roku Box!! Tell us what, “Being a super cool father means…” to you in the comments of this post.”

Daniel Ros presents Used Nintendo 64 Console posted at Hottest Video Games and Cheat Codes, saying, “Find out the latest video games reviews, information on new games, beta testing, sales on video games and more.”

News

Simpsonsparadox presents Fantasy University posted at Simpson’s Paradox .

Leonard Gilhooley x presents 6 Essential Android Apps for College Professors posted at Online College Rankings 2011.

Reviews

Myron Wendall presents 10 Most Controversial Sports Suspensions posted at Sports Management Degrees

Indie Game Reviewer presents A Two-Handed Review of Torchlight from Runic Games posted at Indie Game Reviewer, saying, “Two different comprehensive reviews about popular indie PC RPG game Torchlight together in one flowing examination of the game’s strengths and weaknesses and why its community is growing so quickly.”

Thoughts

Tela Andrews presents Building a VMware Cost Model posted at Digital Fuel – Yisrael’s Blog, saying, “Managing the costs of cloud service providers is challenging. While cloud computing and virtual servers offer flexibility, how do you manage the costs so you know whether its the least expensive option? In this entry we take a look at how to build a cost model for VMware and the benefits this approach can provide for CIOs, IT managers and company owners.”

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Eidos released a new video last week for it’s latest project, Dues Ex: Human Revolution (or Deus Ex 3 as it was called until recently).

Deus Ex is fondly remembered as one of the best first-person RPG’s ever to be made. Cool gadgets, skills and an awesome storyline makes it number one on many top 10 lists across the internet.

Deus Ex 2 (Deus Ex: Invisible War) was, in my opinion, a complete flop. It lacked the story and depth that made the first game so good.

So alas, I despaired, thinking that nothing could ever replace that original game.

However, Eidos appear to have put a lot of time and effort into making the new Deus Ex completely awesome once again. The latest trailer to be released looks fantastic. If the game looks anything like this my eyes will be orgasming while I stab people with my augmented synthetic arms.

Side note: Ion Storm who developed the first two games will not be involved in this one. Rather it is a joint effort between Eidos Montreal (Thief series) and Square Enix (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts). Let’s see if this new combo brings it!

This puppy is due out sometime next year, so try to keep your pants on for now.

If you enjoyed this article, then get updated on more news like this by subscribing to our email or RSS feeds.

Lots of news in the gaming world last week. Here’s a quick run down.

• BlizzCon Sold Out… Stay tuned for a third round of tickets. Buy tix.
• Lord Of The Rings Online follows D&D Online by becoming free. The game will instead make money through premium content such as expansions, equipment and quests. You can get the Beta now.
• Heroes of Might and Magic Online  Open Beta due to be released on 11 June 2010.
• Alpha Protocol released. Is this a sign of what we can expect from Fallout New Vegas?
  Reviews:
  • Gamespot 6.0/10
  • IGN 6.3/10
  • Amazon 3/5
  • 1UP B+
• Company of Heroes Online announced to be released in Fall 2010. Read more in the Q&A.

Alpha Protocol