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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rpg pc games, blog carnival.

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.

If your option isn’t there please pop it in the comments below. Also feel free to add your experiences too.

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.

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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

Rating 8.5/10

The short review

This game is a cross between: Neverwinter Nights/World of Warcraft

It’s good because: • Great story • In depth NPC relationships • Cool combat animations

It’s bad because: • You must travel with a balanced party

The long version

Kick ass storyline

The storyline of Dragon Age: Origins is by far one of the best story lines from any RPG that I have played. For starters depending on your race and class the first chapter of the game is different.

I went with a Human Noble in an attempt to recreate my character from the original Neverwinter Nights. That’s all I’ll say on the matter as to not give away any spoilers.

Sex?!?

One of the rather odd things I found about Dragon Age: Origins is the ability to have sex with your companions. Som

e companions even swing both ways depending on how you want your character to act. These sex scenes are accompanied by some absolutely awful cinematics (with great ‘O’ faces) that just made me cringe.

On the other hand, the fact that the developers took the time and effort to allow you to do this did add an extra level to the game in terms of relationships.

[It doesn't get much cornier then this]

Great combat

I thoroughly enjoyed the combat and not once got bored of killing mob after mob. You are able to employ great tactics using the ‘Tactics’ options and you also have the ability to pause the game at any point and give each person their next order. I only wish that you were able to stack orders like The Sims.

Visually the combat looks fantastic. Each attack looks different and accurately reflects the description of the action. I also love how you can stun or knock down characters and then just bring on the DPS.

The only downside is that the characters I enjoyed traveling were all weapon users rather then magic users. While this was fine in terms of healing (you can make all the potions you want), it made some bosses quite difficult because I simply didn’t have the DPS needed.

Gameplay

In terms of class customization, you can really make your character exactly how you want it to be. Classes have access to both unique and universal class sets. You will however want to only select one combat/magic skill set to max out on initially as you will easily finish the game before being able to max out a second set.

The hardware running of the game was great. I haven’t done any major upgrades to my computer in 2 years and I had a smooth running game.

One thing I really liked was that I never got bored during any of the cut scenes or dialogues. The stories and information was genuinely interesting and I enjoyed finding out more about my companions stories.

[Dual weapon sweep]

Conclusion

This game brings a whole lot to the RPG genre. A lot of time and effort has been put into this game to create an easy to learn fun RPG with an in-depth story. On top of that it looks absolutely fantastic and features some of the most interesting NPCs I’ve ever seen in an RPG.

For all of these reasons and more I give this game an 8.5/10. Pick up Dragon Age: Origins on Amazon.com today for only $36.14

Dragon Age: Origins

[My character and his best friend before the finale battle]

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One of the more recent things they announced was what would be included in their Collector’s Edition.

Thankfully it’s not just a rebranded version of the Fallout 3 Collector’s Edition (which was awesome by the way) but a series of new merchandise (that is casino themed of course) that you can add to your Fallout collection.

Included in the pack is:

• 8 Gaming Casino Chips.
  One from each of the 7 casinos found in Fallout New Vegas as well as a special Platinum Chip recreation.
• Deck of Cards.
  Use these Fallout New Vegas themed cards to challange your friends to game of Caravan which is a brand new game created for Fallout New Vegas.
• Hard Cover Novel.
  This book, called ‘All Roads’ contains some of the back stories of characters that you will meet during your trip.
• ‘Making of’ DVD.
  Looks like an interesting documentary(/marketing piece) with a look behind the scenes on the creation and development of this latest Fallout game.
• DVD copy of the game.

This looks like one of the more awesome Collector’s Edtions that I’ve seen. You can always use an extra deck of cards and I think the DVD would be really interesting to watch. I always enjoy finding out why they make certain decisions about characters, plots and objects in games.

With the release date still being listed as some time in Fall of this year, it’s time to put down that $10 to pre-order Fallout New Vegas at your favourite store.

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

Trophies and awards will be added for Xbox 360 and PS3 players although the game will stay the same as the PC version for the most part. Wii gamers won’t miss out with Nintendo securing an exclusive beach town add-on for the Wii version.

The Nintendo DS version will be slightly watered down but will allow users to still build their Sims houses and furnish them (much like the mobile version). They will also be able to use the stylus to ‘sculpt’ their Sims facial features and attributes. The DS version will also get a story mode in which players will be able to unlock new furnishings and buildings.

The PSP will not be receiving a version of The Sims 3 at this time.

I’ve always enjoyed the Sims although I found the ‘play in background’ feature annoying in The Sims 3 as it meant you missed a lot of important moments in your family and it also made it ridiculously easy to make money in the game. With that feature turned off however it has brought a lot more to the game and made the options nearly endless which is a great thing to see in any RPG.

So if your a console gamer you can look forward to getting your calloused hands on this in a few months. For PC gamers, no need to wait, you can get The Sims 3 now.