Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:12 AM

Category: Role Playing

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

Category: Massively Multiplayer

We read player suggestions on fansite forums every day, and players have a lot of great ideas! One of my personal favorite suggestions is that we provide more options for pets, such as items you can buy them or even the ability to change their color. Another suggestion is "town clothes," so that when you head into Ascalon City or Lion's Arch you can shake off the dust of combat and don something that is decidedly not armor-like. What if you were able to purchase the ability to change hair styles and hair colors on existing characters, or even to acquire options for faces, hair styles, and hair colors that are not even available at character creation? And what about Guild Hall upgrades? Suffice it to say, there are a lot of fun features coming!

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:14 AM

Category: First Person

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:58 AM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

Gaile Gray - Our live content team has been working on exciting new game elements since before the game launched. Later this summer we will stream the “Sorrow’s Furnace” expansion to all players for no charge. This free live content will contain two large explorable areas, with new quests, new monsters and new items to discover.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:59 AM

Category: Role Playing

They have designed a program to procedurally grow forests. Plants sprout, rock formations are uncovered and erode, trees wither and die, soil moves with wind, and smaller vegetation follows suit. This all happens at a rate barely accelerated from normal time, so most players won't notice all of it, but it did make designing the forest that covers nearly half the game (about sixteen square miles) much easier to create and amazingly good looking.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:36 AM

Category: Entertainment

Reports say the company is looking to sell for nearly $850 million, and may go public. Great Hill partners purchased IGN in 2003 for $26 million. Lehman Brothers, a global finance firm, is helping the company explore its options and large media conglomerates, such as Viacom, are among IGN's top suitors.

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

Category: Role Playing

During a recent demonstration of the game by THQ, I was treated to an extensive tour of the world of Titan Quest. What I saw was pretty impressive. One of the first things that jumped out at me is that, as of yet, Titan Quest has no real storyline or characters, just a setting -- Ancient Greece and Egypt. Indeed, according to Iron Lore, they believe that the storyline of an RPG is so important that they're not going to risk screwing it up by doing it themselves.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:01 AM

Category: First Person

Serious Sam II picks up at the end of The Second Encounter, as Sam chases down the villainous Mental into space. There's some wacky story where the denizens of a planet called Sirius recruit you to gather parts to a medallion to help defeat Mental, but it's really just an excuse to send you planet-hopping and from one frantic firefight to the next.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:26 AM

Category: Role Playing

Todd Howard: Half-Life 2 is a great way to view it, and that game really set the "use physics benchmark.... We're obviously using Havok, as they did, and we've done some other cool things with it, like arrows sticking in objects and reorienting the weight of things they stick in. I think the big thing we're learning with the physics is that with an RPG, there is soooo much you can do with it, like traps, stealing things, and more. Things like Telekinesis spells, picking up stuff far away and trying to manipulate the environment to throw off the NPCs and such. Paralyzing guys and watching them fall down stairs never gets old.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:52 AM

Category: Massively Multiplayer

We know that many players right now are having difficulty unlocking items, runes and skills for use in PvP. On our private test servers, we have been testing a new reward system that lets you unlock items, runes, and skills for your pvp only characters through kills and victories in PvP. You'll unlock things faster if you are more successful, but we aren't implementing this system just for the elite players. Our goal is that every player will be able to make progress through normal play.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:45 AM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:40 AM

Category: First Person

Digital Extremes has put the Unreal engine to good use here, giving you control of Doctor Jack Mason, as he tries to uncover the truth behind a mysterious prisoner called Karina who is host to some kind of strange virus.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 3:14 PM

Category: First Person

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:43 PM

Category: First Person

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:45 AM

Category: First Person

The engine is beautiful, and if it can really create an endless series of randomly generated dungeons to crawl though, the replayability factor will be enormous. The weird blend of magic and realism, in both items and environments, should make for a compelling and surreal game world--we look forward to smiting hellspawn in and around landmarks like Big Ben and the Millennium Dome.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:33 PM

Category: Role Playing

Todd Howard: Marksmanship was one of many things we completely overhauled. The way bows and arrows work now is much, much more realistic than anything we've done before. Our goal was to provide a combat system where you could play and finish the game using only that weapon (or magic) if that's what you wanted to do.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:45 PM

Category: First Person

ELEXISISBACK

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:20 AM

Category: First Person

One particularly memorable area takes place on a world of giants, where Sam – and many of Mental’s imported minions – is less than a relative inch tall. Ever wanted to hunt giant ants with a rocket launcher? Here’s your chance.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:37 AM

Category: First Person

Creepy and disgusting-looking aliens are trying to annihilate us and "Earth's savior doesn't want the job" in 2K Games and Human Head Studios' Prey. Powered by the glorious Doom 3 engine, this positively gorgeous PC and Xbox 360 first person shooter casts you as Tommy, a Native American who's turned his back on his heritage and is wasting away in a dead-end job until he and his girlfriend Jenny are abducted by vicious aliens.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:05 AM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:14 AM

Category: Role Playing

The E3 presentation demonstrated several locations in ancient Greece and Egypt, featuring many mythological and historical references that will appeal to the player. Various locations include the Great Pyramids of Egypt, the Parthenon and the maze of Knossos, as well as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. That is something that I fully appreciate being all hooked up on world mythology, ancient cultures and stuff. The demonstration showed some satyr and Cyclops-related fights, as well as a level in Egypt with mummies, making it impossible not to notice the visual neatness of the environments and lovely character design, rendering the mythological beings all the more believable.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:12 AM

Category: Role Playing

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

Category: Role Playing

How big is Guild Wars? Big enough to dethrone World of Warcraft as the best-selling PC title in the month of April, despite being released on April 26. That impressive figure aside, Guild Wars has been garnering attention from MMO publishers and gamers alike thanks to its unusual monthly fee: $0.00. Not an MMO in the traditional sense, the game still manages to provide a competitive and cooperative online roleplaying experience free of charge to all who purchase the game.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:54 AM

Category: Hardware

In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court "Betamax" ruling allowed our industry to innovate and grow, propelling us from $22 billion in 1984 sales to $121 billion in sales this year.

In that landmark decision, the Court not only held the VCR was a legal product, but it created a simple test by which all product introductions are measured: Is the product capable of significant non-infringing uses? This standard gave innovators a bright line test for new products that allow for the creative and flexible use of content.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:25 AM

Category: First Person

Whether you're fighting mutants, Illuminati soldiers, or just about anything else, the battles tend to feel pretty much the same. They can often be challenging, and admittedly, some of the weapons do pack a pretty satisfying punch (especially the ones that can be dual-wielded), but the fights can also get fairly repetitive, especially since the objectives rarely revolve around more than just finding keycards and other bric-a-brac to try to open locked doors so you can get to the next section

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 7:00 AM

Category: General

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:24 AM

Category: Strategy

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:11 AM

Category: Role Playing

Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, which is being developed under the watchful eyes of John Romero and Josh Sawyer, promises to take the series kicking-and-screaming into the realm of story-driven combat-oriented RPGs. And this being Midway, you can expect a dark tale, a gloomy atmosphere and gore. Lots of gore.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:06 AM

Category: Role Playing

While the game world is vast, it is empty. Outside of the initial town, there are no non-essential NPC's. The largest town has fewer than 10 people in six buildings. There is no ‘color', no life to observe, and while you can see night and day transpire, it has little relevance anywhere in the world. Also, while the quests you get are interesting and challenging far beyond those normally found in action-RPGs, aside from class-progression quests there are no ‘side quests'.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:19 AM

Category: Role Playing

• Better Magic Icons
• Full Dragonscale Armor
• Lost sword of Altea
• Plasma Shield 2
• Red Velvet Dress

• VTA Travel Agency
• Suran Archery Tradehouse
• K_Potion_Upgrade

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:49 AM

Category: Action

Activision recently held a play test of F4 at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, where IGN staffers arrived en masse to score a little game time. While a substantial portion of the game remained locked, Activision showed enough to whet the collective appetites of all in attendance. To start, the action and narrative in F4 splits between 10 different story missions, each of which boasts sprawling sub-missions. And these missions take place in a wide range of environments.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:41 AM

Category: Hardware

• What Defines a "Reference" Loudspeaker?
• Opening the TiVo Backdoor
• Access Hidden Files on Your iPod
• Store Digital Photos on Your iPod

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 1:17 PM

Category: First Person

The storyline behind Area 51 could have been directly ripped from a science fiction movie. At the mysterious installation, experiments have been carried out by the government on Aliens to use their technology for weaponry. One day a super alien is built who takes control of the installation and begins the invasion of the aliens into earth.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:59 PM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:40 AM

Category: First Person

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:56 PM

Category: Role Playing

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:02 PM

Category: Role Playing

It is commonly thought that the Gothic series has had somewhat difficult controls up to this point and my host affirms this before I can pop the question. He assures me that III's controls have been simplified; left-click to attack and right-click to block - very easy. Quirky as their controls were, I appreciated that Gothic I and II were games that could be played completely one handed as I like to eat while I play. I ask if the option for the old control schemes will be included and I get a "Yes." I'm also told that the new inventory system is designed so that objects can be dragged and dropped with the mouse, but there isn't a visual for this in the demonstration.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 8:19 PM

Category: Role Playing

The four main guilds are the mages, fighters, thieves, and Dark Brotherhood (assassin’s guild). Each of these is a main quest unto itself and you can join all four if you like. There’s also the Arena, which is a lot like a guild in that you can spend a lot of time fighting in the Arena circuit and improving your status. We feel all of the guilds are a lot more rewarding and polished than ever before and each will be a lot of fun if it’s the only thing you do in the game.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 10:15 PM

Category: Role Playing

All players in Guild Wars can add an additional character class to their profile, but there will be points during the game where you have a lot more spells available for one class than you do for another, and it can also be difficult to properly divvy up your skill points among the types of magic available to you. Each class will have four unique magic types, but you'll only have enough points to be truly effective in two, maybe three areas.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:31 PM

Category: First Person

The problem is, if the environments recall past episodes of Unreal, so too does the behavior of the enemy. The soldiers are definitely aggressive, which often stands in for smarts. But they have a tendency to clump up, use cover only in specific situations, and even commit suicide.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 11:12 PM

Category: First Person

"Project Offset" (working title) is a game like no other first person shooter to date. We wanted to make an FPS set in a epic fantasy world. A game where you can choose one of many character classes. A game where clans can combat over mission based objectives and be ranked accordingly. A game where you can play alone, coop, team based objective or deathmatch.

The controls feel exactly how an FPS player would expect. Play as an archer and
your skill using the bow and leading your target is what will set you apart. When the battles get close up, pull out your sword and continue the fight melee.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:03 PM

Category: Strategy

When you start the game, you'll come preequipped with an upgradeable city square, with space to build about sixteen facilities inside. You can construct towers to help defend the city, but more importantly, the city walls prevent the easy use of idiot-simple instant-win strategies. There's no such thing as a huntress rush in Dragonshard.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:32 PM

Category: Role Playing

Most of your time in the game will be spent in various dungeons, hacking up goblins, zombies, headless ax wielders, trolls, and the like. You'll find yourself jamming on the mouse buttons most of the time, either to attack or to block oncoming attacks. There's also the option of a few acrobatic moves to dodge with, but since enemies attack in fairly large groups, I found myself jumping away from a dagger-wielding foe, only to become fodder for archers in most situations.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 9:33 PM

Category: Role Playing

Mindscape has today taken the decision to delay the release of Dungeon Lords by three weeks, to allow the development team additional time to address and polish some aspects of the gameplay. Mindscape apologises for this delay, however, as a distributor and publisher of quality leisure and games software, Mindscape feels honor bound to offering only the best titles, produced to the highest of standards, to its loyal fan and customer base. Dungeon Lords will now be available for PC on 1st July 2005.

Posted by Darren 'Doom Dude' Finch at 2:12 PM

Category: Role Playing

Eventually, we found ourselves in front of a dungeon. Inside were huge beasts; reptilian creatures, giant talking rats, and walking skeletons. Combat is realtime and essentially plays out exactly as it did in Morrowind: keep slashing until dead; not much strategy there. However, a neat thing about the game is the lack of having to upgrade your stats; it's all done automatically. If you want to increase your archery, practice with the bow and arrow. This should alleviate much of the micro-management that may bog down the flow of the game.