Archive for February, 2009

Betrayal in Antara

Saturday, February 21st, 2009

It is similar to the earlier Betrayal at Krondor. It is like a sequence. This game tells the twisty tale of the ancient Antaran Empire. It has been created in the distant past with the most benevolent of intentions. The prey falls to widespread decay in the game and also a political corruption.

The players assume the roles of 4 characters that speak. Total number of characters are 50. They are caught in a web of political intrigue, racial hatred, secret societies, and yes, personal discovery also. The “novelization” of the game is appreciated by gamers in the game.

The game, also popularly known as BiA also features a good number of side quests and sub-plots that often determines whether the gamer feels empowered or railroaded where as most of the interaction is first person. The game even features third person, turn-based strategic combat, which comprises perhaps the most noticeable “break” in an otherwise admirably seamless game experience.

Gamers who are partial to magic will appreciate the game’s skill-based magic system.

Battle Mages: Sign of Darkness Preview

Friday, February 20th, 2009

This game is the upcoming expansion to the original Battle Mages. Battle Mages: Sign of Darkness is a game of role-playing strategy, which has been released only in Europe. The expansion of Battle Mages will be adding 4 new campaigns that also includes an undead campaign, an improved inventory system, new magical abilities, and new hero characters in each of the campaign. Apart from all these other new features are also there that also includes new race-dwarves.

One of the good new features of the game is that the upgraded units can now be transferred throughout the campaigns. Hence, gamers can now build them up to the ultimate units, just in time for the climactic last battle. The graphics engine of Battle Mages is now much improved. Now there will be day and night battles with the real-time changing weather conditions. New items and artifacts are also included in the game. Troops can now have inventory slots.

Each of the 16 maps is up to 3 hours long and moreover there are too many dynamic quests and optional tasks in the expansion. It is also heard that Battle Mages: Sign of Darkness will be shipping for the PC this year.

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures is an online role-playing game from Funcom. It starts out with a 20 hour single player role playing game and in fact it actually creates specialized character after changing the professions twice. Once you change it at character level of 5 and next time at the end of the adventure when the character level reaches 20.

Funcom is also designing this part to be self-contained. It gives suggestion that some fans of role playing can also be satisfied only by playing through the single player game and leaving it at that.

For rest the game lets player take their level 20 characters into an online version of the savage world of Hyboria. The game takes place just after the novel of Howard ‘Hour of the Dragon.’

In the novel the barbarian ascended to the throne of the kingdom of Cimmeria. The neighboring rival nations of Aquilonia and Stygia have begun to consider an uneasy truce with all new threat.

This game advances all the online gamers to experience level of 80. This will involve minimum of one additional specialization into an elite character class.

Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales Review

Tuesday, February 10th, 2009

Pirate life is tough. We all know. This game presents an open-ended role-playing experience of he golden age of piracy combining ship-to-ship combat along with on-front exploration throughout the Caribbean Islands. The game seems to be a sequel of previous piracy games of the developer.

The game has a worrisome start with screen dense featuring different gameplay options like nation progress rates, sailing settings, encounter frequency, and simplified sea artificial intelligence. Overall there’s a difficulty but with fine level of customization right off the bat.

Age of Pirates is sometimes aimless. Simple text-based quests hardly hold interest. Character leveling keeps a gamer playing. Its more compelling. Pacing and quality of presentation is all over the place. Too much effort is lost in creating nice-looking ships, water and weather efforts. This is because the close-up sailing sequences look very pretty.

Most of the rest of the game simply look bad. The clunky interface is also unclear and for a gamer it is very hard to get used to the bombastic music. It flares up when the ship gets to fight. As a whole it makes the battle rushed. Moreover, to this the battles wind up being long and slow. The game is so bad that it seems like that it is half baked.