Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:38 AM

Category: Action

And the keyboard brings up another point; there is no mouse use in this game at all.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:34 AM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:38 AM

Category: Strategy

The story is great and you soon find out that Tyber isn’t the greatest chum with one Jabba the Hutt. Being betrayed and then gloated at by such a fat slug gets the Zann Consortium mad so after a risky prison break, courtesy of a Captain Solo and his walking carpet friend Chewbacca, you have to start rebuilding the criminal organisation from scratch.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:01 AM

Category: Strategy

Strategy game 1701 A.D. (a.k.a. ANNO 1701) primarily deals with economics and organizing buildings, but it also throws in a healthy dose of war. Similar to Age of Empires, players start with a few resources and a small warehouse for supplies. From there, collecting additional resources like food, wood and metal help to attract more people as the town progresses from a survivalist settlement to a full thriving city.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:57 AM

Category: General

They're timeless. They're inspirational. They inspire us, make us question our standards, and provide a roadmap for the future of development. They are the games that innovate and move the industry forward, and Gamasutra is proud to recognize them with our series of Quantum Leap Awards.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:55 AM

Category: Entertainment

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- James Brown, the legendary R&B belter, a singer and songwriter who created a foundation for funk and provided the roots of rap, a man of many nicknames but a talent that can only be described as one of a kind, is dead.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:02 AM

Category: General

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:34 AM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:23 AM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

The Wintersday Festival is a time of great joy in Tyria and Elona. What better way to share that joy than to invite players to create art that represents the special holidays of winter? The invitation to join the first annual Guild Wars Wintersday Art Contest was accepted by hundreds upon hundreds of players, who merged their own holiday traditions with their love of Guild Wars to create wonderful seasonal art.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:35 AM

Category: First Person

Along with marketing struggles, the team ran into new challenges once they got the first episode out the door. Mustaine explained, "we could have done episode 2 in 6 months, but we'd have needed double the team size just to keep up with the Half-Life 2 engine." As it turns out, hitching their wagon to Valve became as much a curse as blessing. Besides having to merge the code every time the engine was updated, it also drew inevitable comparisons to Half-Life 2.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:14 PM

Category: Role Playing

Weapons and armor are both very important to the long-term life expectancy of characters, and there will be ways to customize both. Clothing is a whole other matter, and in fact, we have separate slots for pants and shirts. We want to have a way for players to have "casual" wear they can kick around in when they're not out slaying Demons, and we're looking forward to making a TON of cool stuff for players to collect and wear.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:31 PM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:51 AM

Category: Role Playing

If you die (and you will, oh yes, you will) you’ll have to reload the entire world all over. Even if you save the game, swing at an NPC who can kill you in one strike and die in the same spot you saved at, you’re still looking at another four or five minute load-screen extravaganza. Cached textures and models? Forget about it.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:34 AM

Category: First Person

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:44 AM

Category: First Person

Niche fans are likely going to be pretty pissed about Rainbow Six: Vegas because it's definitely not the Rainbow Six that was. Does that mean it's a bad game? No, not at all. It's just way different than it used to be. Are we sad about the change in the PC version? Very. But even through the tears it's pretty clear that Rainbow Six: Vegas is an accomplished action shooter.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:47 AM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

This probably sounds pretty familiar for Diablo fans, and it is. The gameplay is simplistic but the depth here comes from using your skills wisely and equipping yourself in a way that plays to your character's strengths. If you just start frantically clicking on monsters all over the screen you won't even survive the first fight, so you've got to learn to focus fire on one monster until it's dead and only then move on to the next, and you've got to know when to run if you're firing of ranged attacks.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:56 AM

Category: First Person

Exploring the early levels, we ran across three competing factions of stalkers: Duty, Freedom and Loners. The Duty faction is composed of ex-military personnel who are driven by a desire to protect the world from the dangers of the zone. Duty stalkers will actively hunt down mutant creatures in an attempt to destroy them. They will also trade artifacts with the scientists studying the zone.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 6:16 PM

Category: Strategy

The AI (or lack thereof) really shows its face in the game's three scripted campaigns, which place you in the role of King Arthur, Vlad the Impaler, and Siegfried. The missions are all preset with defined victory conditions, which is fine, but the missions play out more as puzzles rather than forcing you to use any real strategy.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:48 PM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

Wintersday 2006 — Special in-game events have become fan favorites the world over, and during this holiday season Guild Wars players will be in for another Wintersday Festival! During this event, players will find favorite outposts dressed to the nines with holiday décor, as they are invited to complete holiday-themed quests, participate in PvP snowball fights, and receive unique holiday rewards such as Winter Gifts, a Snowman Summoner, Eggnog, and Candy Canes. Wintersday 2006 will take place in-game December 20, 2006 through January 1, 2007. Visit www.guildwars.com for more event details.

Party Search — A brand new Party Search panel will be added to Guild Wars this December, which will allow players to more easily form groups. Casual and hard-core gamers alike will benefit from this new system, as it will make it easier for players to form parties for some of the tougher quests and missions in the game, find the last cog needed for a fearsome group that can tear through the PvP arenas, or just connect with old friends online to go explore the diverse Guild Wars world.

Reconnect After Disconnect — One of the most player-requested features comes to Guild Wars! If a player gets dropped from the game due to a connection problem, and that player can reconnect within ten minutes, the player's character will be relocated to the spot of disconnection. If the character was performing an action, such as casting a spell or auto-attacking a target, that character will complete the action as if still connected. If a player is in a group when disconnected, the other members of the party will be notified about the player's connection problems.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:25 PM

Category: Role Playing

The possibilities of this game looking outstanding are available, the only problem is you have to have a gaming computer created by NASA and backed up by Alienware. Since most of us don't have a $4,000 gaming rig, so 95% of the gaming community is forced to set the detail levels to "redicously low" (closely resembling a Playstation 1 game circa 1995). When the graphics detail is set this low, the landscapes are barren and character models are beyond bland.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:05 AM

Category: Action

Without giving too much away, the story starts with Captain Archer's attempts to help a female Vulcan scientist named T'Uerell. In trying to help her, he uncovers an elusive mystery that flows through to the eras of Kirk and Picard. Each captain only gets a handful of missions but they're held together by the mystery of this Vulcan scientist. We won't say more than that, but there's a definite showdown where things are (mostly) resolved.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:38 PM

Category: General

Over the past four years, the number of people aged 45 and over who buy games for personal use has risen by more than 40 per cent, while the figure for women gamers is up by 67 per cent. Meanwhile, sales to men have increased by just 4 per cent.

In real life, Sandra Newton is a small, bespectacled woman who's about to turn 62. But in the online role-playing game Guild Wars, she becomes the much younger and significantly more buxom Dydia Fayrefire, who gallantly fights off evil centaurs, harpies and demons.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:21 AM

Category: Developer

Harward is excited about his expanded role at Ritual, the developer responsible for Black Hawk Down: Team Sabre and SiN Episodes: Emergence, saying, "2007 looks to be a great year as we finish up our current projects and start some exciting new ones...I'm flattered by the huge amount of support everyone in the tribe has shown. There's a ton of positive energy in the halls."

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:44 PM

Category: General

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks) took home five awards, the most of the night, including "Game of the Year" and "Most Addictive." Gears of War (Microsoft/Epic Games) racked up four awards including "Studio of the Year" for Epic Games.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:52 AM

Category: Role Playing

All of the characters in Hellgate: London are human. This means that we make huge distinctions in how each faction looks when wearing the same type of equipment. A leather jacket on a Templar will look very different than one on a Cabalist, for example. Players will have a wide breadth of choices that will allow them to customize the look of their characters, however. All the basics are there - hairstyles and color, eye color, skin tone, faces, facial hair (men), accessories (women), height, weight.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:46 AM

Category: First Person

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:45 PM

Category: Movies

In any case, not only has Dungeon Siege hit a release date snag, but it's no longer a two-part fantasy epic, as Boll confirmed it would be condensed into one film. Boo!

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:48 PM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

Two new classes come in the desert-themed expansion: Dervish and Paragon. The former use gigantic scythes to assault multiple opponents at once and also have enchantments to use on themselves or their weapons. The Paragon is more of a support class, able to toss spears into the fray, or buff up their friends and allies.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:31 PM

Category: First Person

It is now for the second time that the black Chernobyl erupted to open a Zone – a new horror of ill mankind. It was at that moment that hundreds of people turned into wordless toys of invisible forces, into insane toys with erased personalities.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:29 PM

Category: First Person

The action is frenetic; the Locust horde and it's various "breeds" including the terrifying Berserker or the gecko-like Wretch, make formidable opponents.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:53 AM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

The game introduces the classes of the Dervish and Paragon. The dervish is a whirlwind of scythe-oriented destruction, unleashing AoEs (area of effect spells), with some enchantments that will prove a boon to not only the dervish but his or her party. But when it comes to party-oriented skills, the paragon is the boss. Basically a ranged attacker, the paragon also has shouts that inspire party members to greater heights.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:22 PM

Category: Comic Books

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (AP) -- Wearing Superman pajamas and covered with his Batman blanket, comic book illustrator Dave Cockrum died Sunday.

The 63-year-old overhauled the X-Men comic and helped popularize the relatively obscure Marvel Comics in the 1970s. He helped turn the title into a publishing sensation and major film franchise.

Cockrum died in his favorite chair at his home in Belton, South Carolina, after a long battle with diabetes and related complications, his wife Paty Cockrum said Tuesday.