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

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.

To experience this game in its full glory you will need a reasonably high end PC  for its a pretty demanding game. The collectors edition has a added CD called “Elite GFX” which enhances the graphics even further and will make your eyes water from its beauty. The music is astonishing and very atmospheric with the power metal band Blind Guardian also making the theme song and an appearance in a video sequence. Make sure you set a few good hours aside if you plan on updating your game (which I highly recommend you do due to the excessively large amount of bugs) because many of the patches don’t seem to work and won’t apply to your game. (even the ones from the official site.)

The gameplay itself is rather repetitious as you would come to expect from any hack ‘n’ slash, where grinding through quests and new areas is a major element to the game. The quests themselves are your typical “collect some items” or “kill some people causing trouble” which don’t seem to hold much uniqueness at all. The main storyline itself is a little more involved yet it still lacks in depth and most likely won’t keep you interested. The AI (Artificial Intelligence) isn’t very intelligent at all and you will find enemies randomly spread out throughout the map walking around aimlessly. I may be a bit harsh on the game but once you put all those negatives aside and look at the game in its entirety you have yourself a addictive, fun, beautiful and massive environment to play around in.

Once you start the game and are ready to go you will have the option of 6 classes to pick from, with each having their own pros and cons.

The classes are:-

Seraphim – Skilled with weapons, technology and magic this is your typical Paladin like character.

High Elf – Your pure caster class. With the click of a finger or a wink of the eye the High Elf can cause massive destruction.

Dryad – The hippie tree hugging caster/bow user who is one with nature.

Temple Guardian – A ancient cyborg robotic creature with a gun arm specializing in melee and ranged physical damage.

Shadow Warrior – The deadly heavily armored melee fighter using brute strength and force to chop your foes.

Inquisitor – The evil priest/necromancer class summoning the dead and casting dark magic.

After picking your class you can choose your deity and which campaign you wish to play (good or evil) then the epic cut scene appears and your thrown into the wilderness. As you eradicate foes you will gain your much loved experience points and before you know it you will DING! and the ability to specialize and tweak your character will become available. When leveling you will have several attributes to choose from including Strength, Stamina, Vitality, Dexterity, Intelligence and Willpower. Depending on your level you may also have the ability to pick an extra Skill and Combat Art Slot. Once you get going it can become very difficult to put down and losing sleep may become apparent in some gamers.

All in all if you have some spare time up your sleeve and are looking for something to keep you going until Diablo 3 is released next year then Sacred 2 Fallen Angel may just be your best bet.

For those who are Witcher fans check out this developers diary too.

CD Projeckt Red released an official statement today on their The Witcher site that a sequel to the game that sold over 1.5M copies world wide. Although I can’t find it on the website, Gamespot has claimed that the game will be gracing our shelves in early 2011.

Although the game engine is being built completely from scratch (and looks amazing I might add), The Witcher 2 storyline will be continuing directly on from The Witcher. With the change that everyone and everything looks a whole lot better. We should also be seeing smoother gameplay and better combat.

some ugly mugs beautifully rendered

From the horses mouth

“I am really glad that we can officially present what we’ve been working on for the past two-and-a-half years.” – said Adam Kiciński, CEO of CD Projekt RED studio. “We learned a lot during The Witcher’s development process, and we are using all of that knowledge to ensure the sequel is one of the best RPGs people have ever played. We’ve concentrated on improving the most successful parts of the Witcher, and I strongly believe that The Witcher 2 will be loved both by fans of the original and newcomers. We know that we aimed very high while producing The WItcher 1. Now we are aiming even higher with The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.”

The Witcher 2 promises to build upon the considerable success of The Witcher and we can all remember how much that was to play (read reviews). More updates are slowly being released onto thewitcher.com and I will keep you updated as more news is given.

Watch the trailer here

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Gamespot says…

Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening doesn’t reach the high standards set by its illustrious precursor, but it’s still a great game on its own terms. The combat and questing are as fun as they ever were and will keep you involved up until the very end, in spite of the uneven quality of the story and the characters that fill it. Oghren once said, “Misery, vomit, and malt liquor. Ah, reminds me of home.” You know you’ve missed such delights too, and now’s the time to head back.

Kevin says it’s good fun but lacks the memorable experience of the first game. Read more.

IGN says…

It should come as no surprise to fans of the original game that Dragon Age Origins Awakening is going to give you more of what you want. There’s an epic story with choices that really matter, fantasy combat with loads of amazing enemies, and a deep character system with lots of flexibility. It has a strong narrative connection to the original game, but the sense that your previous choices matter isn’t as strong as we’d have liked. I still miss the old companions, but the new characters are just as interesting once you get to know them.

Steve Butts was all smiles about this expansion and seemed to enjoy playing it a lot. Read more.

My Review

Is coming out soon!

Get it now on Amazon or Play-Asia

Gamespot video review (includes gameplay):

The third expansion (World of Warcraft: Cataclysm) to Blizzard’s huge money maker (estimated $810M per year from western gamers only) is due to be released in the fourth quarter this year and there is plenty packed into this tasty US$40.00 morsel.

Brand new races

Goblins:
Yes you can now play these crafty little green men. After many a sour business deal with the ever naive Alliance, the Goblins have joined the dark side as it were.

Worgen:
These great looking wolf-men are the latest addition to the Alliance side. Not entirely tame, it will be fun to take these guys out on the prowl for some Horde blood.

[Mmm, some Tauren hide would be great right now.]

New level cap

Just 5 new levels this time to a level cap of 85. New talents, skills and a new system called the path system which will enable you to improve your characters in a completely new way.

It’s time for a make over

As well as new areas being opened, Azeroth is getting a rather large makeover. You can enjoy checking out the new scenery on your flying mount. YES, flying mounts will be usable in Azeroth once you reach level 85 but be warned they will be very expensive and you may need additional WoW gold.
These new changes will unveil all new quests which will give you some variety if you decide to start as one of the new races.

Amazon have the pre-order available.

Don’t waste precious WoW time going to the shops, get it to your door as soon as it comes out.

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

Check out the teaser video:

Then along came Diablo II and blew RPG gamers away again. New classes, skills and weapons as well as ranked online play provided gamers with hours and hours of sweet ass gaming.

Diablo III was announced in 2008 and naturally caused a storm of excitement in the gaming community. Although no release date had been set (and it was predicted to be as late as 2011) gaming stores were flooded with pre-orders. I should know, I was working in EB Games at the time.

Slowly information has been released about what this game will contain. I’ll go over some of it below.

Classes:

There will be five classes (four have been announced):

• Witch Doctor – Freak stuff up.
• (Good ol’) Barbarian – Chop stuff up.
• Wizard – Blow stuff up.
• Monk – Punch stuff up.

You can choose to be a male or female version of each class. The Diablo III classes will feature a new level of skill customization.

Other points of interest:

• There will be a new Tristram called New Tristram. A fairly dark and grizzly place.
• Creatures like The Fallan Ones will return so you can enjoy crushing these small red demons once again.
• Quests and storyline are still top secret. Check my blog closer to the release date for more info.

Something excellent:

At this stage Diablo III is only being developed for PC and Mac. In your face console gamers!

To get in on any special game releases you have to pre-order your copy now. Seeing as it will be such a popular game, any collector’s editions will sell out quickly and you will miss out. Amazon already have a pre-order system up for $59.99.

Diablo III

The latest gameplay video to wet your appetite:

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade has added an incredible amount of new content to the game. The level cap has been increased to 70 and along with this new talents and skills were also available. There is also two new classes, the Blood Elves (Horde) and Dranei (Alliance) which will now allow Horde to access the Paladin class and Dranei the Shaman class. Both side will need these classes as the battle on to new end game instances.

Unfortunately all of your tier gear is now outstripped by most greens that you will find in the new Outland area. If the video below doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what will.

Buy WoW Gold

Pick up your copy on Amazon

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade

Don’t have WoW? Get The Burning Crusade expansion in the World of Warcraft battlechest.

World of Warcraft Battle Chest

Official Trailer