Hack ‘n’ Slash! Spam that left click so fast your hand sets on fire and you burn a hole in your mouse pad. That’s what this game is all about my friends and anyone who has played Diablo will certainly notice some large familiarities with Sacred 2.

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.

CD Projekt Red have brought out a new trailer for The Witcher 2. It’s looking really great, I hope they get it all finished up and working before the release.

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

Stop what you are doing! This is awesome!

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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Tera is a new MMORPG that is due to be released early 2011 by Bluehole Studios. It shows a lot of promise, although early reviews have shown it to be mainly PvE with minimal PvP which you may find a good thing or a bad thing.
Hand to Hand combat in high heels anyone?

Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to play Dragon Age: Origins – Awakening, (damn uni eating up all my hours) but the reports around the net are saying it’s fantastic.

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):

So what’s new?

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:

Diablo was in it’s  day one of the most groundbreaking RPG games around. You had a huge selection of items, a simple system to customize your character, some wicked looking weapons and a whole heap of bad dudes to kill with them.

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

So you loved Baldur’s Gate? And then you loved Baldur’s Gate II? Well Neverwinter Nights is exactly what you are looking for.

Based on Dungeons and Dragons 3rd Edition rules, this fantasy style game gives you the choice of 8 classes to choose from. The original game alone contains over 50 hours of gameplay not including online gaming. 2 expansions provide you with nearly double the content as well as epic level feats and skills.

The storyline is a typical save the world and kill all the bad dudes. There is plenty of options to create your character into a super being of your choice. Take the path of a heavily fortified warrior with many layers of armour or become a sorcerer who can blast away all of his enemies in one fireball.

This is one of my favourite games of all time. While the graphics are a little dated, the story and gameplay are still top quality. I really can’t recommend it enough.

Buy it on Amazon cheap:

Neverwinter Nights Diamond

Check out these screenshots:

Get Neverwinter Nights on eBay:

[wordbay]neverwinter nights pc -2[/wordbay]

If WoW took the MMORPG community by storm, this game took everyone else.

The game is set in a massive fantasy world with the usual heroes and villains. You can choose which alignment you would like to be by your actions during the game.

There are several races to choose from, many which can be recognized from the other Elder Scrolls chapters (Morrowind and the Daggerfall games). You can then choose from a huge range of attributes what exactly your character is good or bad at. You can turn him or her into a spell caster, sword wielder, archer or a heavy mace heaver as just a few ideas.

The graphics are absolutely stunning. Detailed 3D environments with a huge range of NPC’s set across one of the biggest maps in offline RPG.

Oblivion opened up a lot of people to fantasy RPG who had previously never played RPG’s before and this alone makes it one of the best RPG PC games ever made. It was also released on Xbox 360 and PS3 and some stores put it out in some PS3 bundles.

Since it’s release it has had several expansions which are all included in the GOTY (Game of the Year)  edition.

Buy this fantastic game on Amazon:

Oblivion: Game of the Year

Details:

Made by: Bethesda
View: First Person or Third Person
Game Hours (including side quests and exploring): 100+
Offline only.

Gameplay Video: