This is not normal !! It CAN’T BE TRUE !! The 2009 VGA Fighting game of the year. Capcom’s STREET FIGHTER IV is only $9.99 USD on STEAM !!! How is that possible ??? Well stop thinking about it, you only have another 3 hours left before it goes back to its regular price of $39.99 !! ITS 75% OFF !! If you don’t have this amazing game, now is your chance to grab it as its literally being given away for FREE !!
Click on the link below to buy it.
Thanks STEAM for this amazing deal. And of course Capcom for creating the best fighting game of 2009.
Firecracker HD is a INDIE game available on Xbox 360.
Do you love firecrackers, and spectacular explosions ? Well if the answer is YES !! Then you’ve come to the right place. The fine people over at Yaystuff brings you what you desire…in HIGH DEF. All firecrackers contained within are genuine, real explosions. Chemicals were combined, ignited and are now no longer with us so that YOU could bring the action home for the new year!
Yaystuff have been very generous and provided us with 3 Firecracker HD codes to give away. What we need you to do is simply follow Capsule Computers and Yaystuff on twitter.
Here is Competition 1st place winner : Red Tanks’s review of Anno 1404
Congratulations to Red Tank on a job well done.
Enjoy the read and let us know what you thought of it
–
Anno 1404 is the fourth in the popular city / colonial builder series and the second full game by developer: Related Designs. While city builders aren’t really the most popular genre out there, it does offer a very unique experience that other games just can’t reproduce. What this game brings is an intense experience that will require brain power, patience and lots and lots of time. This game is different, this game is not for everybody.. but is it for you?
The games concept at its core is very simple, you build to build some more and all while keeping your populations needs and wants in mind. If that sounds too simple for you, then fret not as this is one of the more difficult and addicting games this reviewer has played all year.
The game itself handles pretty similar to most city builders or rts. You get the classic birds eye viewpoint, you point and click to do everything — build buildings, move troops, ships, etc — and moving the mouse around the edges moves the camera. But what makes this game addicting and particularly hard to put down is its brilliantly crafted gameplay and its gamemodes.
There are three game modes in Anno 1404; Campaign, Scenario, and Continuous game. Campaign consist of eight levels and a story that has you building your way to prevent a crazy cardinal from starting a crusade. An adventure that takes you from the Occident ( the West ) to the Orient( a little more about this later on). The Scenario mode on the other hand lets you waste your time on six scenarios with varying difficulties and winning conditions that will take hours upon hours of your time.
But the real meat of this game is in the Continuous game mode, it’s basically a never ending mode or a free build mode depending on how you look at it. And what this mode do is it lets you play the game however you want to play it, as you can customize how many ai players you play with, how difficult they are, size of the map, starting gold, etc etc. This game mode — in my humble opinion — is one of the most addicting game modes available in any game out right now. But one might be asking about a multiplayer game mode; I’m sad to inform any reader that there isn’t one. While the absence of any multiplayer mode is a bit disappointing; This reviewer would argue that the Scenario and Continuous mode more than compensates for it with its almost endless replayability, something that players of the game could vouch for.
Now the obvious new addition to the game is the oriental faction and the oriental islands. The oriental islands are almost entirely made up of sand, which in turn makes the islands infertile and unsuitable for most production buildings. You need this things called Noria, and what it does is it pumps the land with water turning the normally dead and lifeless islands green and fertile. But before you can build that Noria, you need good relations with the oriental factions because you don’t have access to it unless the sultan likes you.
My head hurts just thinking about the other gameplay features. For example, I haven’t even mentioned natural disasters, trading, ship routing, diplomacy, and many more. And unfortunately I won’t be able to because this review is too long as it is.
If you’ve read this far then you would have noticed that we haven’t talked about any sort of combat. While you can command troops and ships to engage opposing AI’s there is very little need for it. In fact one can avoid it completely( except on the campaign mode), the only real battles you might be required to do is getting rid of annoying little pirate ships that would occasionally pester your trade ships. Very little emphasis is put into combat, instead what you get is a fully realized and addicting city builder.
The games graphics and audio is great, and it surprisingly runs well on cheaper or older computers even laptops. I’ve tested this on a laptop with a graphics card that’s equivalent to the desktop nvidia 8800 gt, and played it with settings mostly on the high side and resolution at 1600 x 900 and it runs smooth with very little hiccups during gameplay. The artistic details on buildings, ships, and the many islands is nothing short of fantastic. Not that the game looks photo realistic or anything like that but it does have a very appealing artsy look( if you haven’t notice yet). Not to mention the cities you build feels and looks like a real living, breathing city. I sometimes find myself just zooming in just to see what my little people are doing.
But it’s not all good news, the initial loading is quite long — granted it’s the only loading in the whole game and after it the game is pretty much load free — ,i found some of my loaded games to be running slow/choppy even though they worked fine before, and I’ve had friends experiencing some strange graphical issues that made the game unplayable. While I personally believe that most of these are gaming rig related, it’s still an annoyance that must be mentioned.
Voice acting and the music is also top notch. Accents are well done and dialogue is sometimes humorous ( in a good way ). I found myself playing the game for 2 hours straight and the game out of nowhere told me to go on a break and get some coffee, — while not necessary — humor is a good addition to a normally tense and sometimes frustrating experience.
Verdict?
The game is different from what most people play. There’s nothing to shoot, you don’t control large armies and there’s very little emphasis on combat. But if you enjoy more of a laid back rts/city builder experience, stressing patience and a requirement of time to master then look this game up. While it might not have a multiplayer mode it compensates with endless single player replayability and while there is a steep learning curve, the game rewards your patience with an experience that offers a sort of accomplishment that very few games can boast about. An 8.5 out of 10
note: The Game is also known as Dawn of Discovery in North America.
note: There is also a wii game with the same title ( Dawn of Discovery ).
note: There is an expansion pack on the way adding multiplayer to the game.
Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles Publisher: Capcom Developer: Capcom Platform: Wii (Reviewed) Release Date: November 17, 2009
Resident Evil’s sudden drop into doing Rail Shooters comes off as a bit ironic in my mind. When the first Resident Evil came around, it was a hit because it involved shooting zombies in a context where you didn’t have to put in two quarters every time you get hit three times. After that, the series continued going with a story that was so outrageous it made Joseph Campbell spin in his grave, and yet, we all accepted it subconsciously for one reason: at least it’s better than House of the Dead. Now, here we are with Resident Evil relatively doing the formula of House of the Dead with its Chronicles series, which raises a big question: has Resident Evil become the new House of the Dead? I don’t want to go so far as to say that, but at least Resident Evil tries new things.
On the time-line of Resident Evil, if you are still keeping track, Darkside Chronicles takes place before Resident Evil 4 with Leon Kennedy on his first mission with his partner, Jack Krauser, taking down a possible viral outbreak in South America. Krauser, still new to fighting zombies and mutated super-grasshoppers, asks Leon to divulge every bit of information of his past experiences with Umbrella Corporation. The game then turns into a condensed version of Resident Evil 2 in the middle of the viral outbreak of Raccoon City during Leon’s first day on the force. Later on, the game returns to the South America incident to reveal that the new viral outbreak is a new strain of the Veronica Virus, transitioning things to a condensed summary of Resident Evil: Code Veronica. Finally, the game resolves in an epic gunfight in the South America incident. In short, Darkside Chronicles is a Rail Shooter version of two old Resident Evil games woven into a new story.
The Rail Shooter gun play is very identical of the scheme used in Dead Space: Extraction, almost to the letter. If enemies pop up, point the cursor at them and hit Fire until they fall over, then hit Fire again until their heads explode. You keep firing at enemies until you make it to the end of the chapter, then you repeat until you win.
If I was charitable, I would say that Darkside Chronicles was an Extraction clone, but I think we can excuse comparison to other games for the sake of not sounding like snoots. The differences are however, worth noting. Extraction’s bosses were few and far between but challenging nonetheless, especially if you don’t have the right weapon to even damage it and are stuck with your basic gun the whole fight. Also, there are more opportunities to pick up ammo and new weapons, which is good, because if you pick up a new weapon and you already have four, you have to either drop the new one or one of your old ones. The enemies also attack in more frantic swarms, making firefights intense, especially when there’s little indication as to when they’ll attack.
Darkside Chronicles on the other hand, is the antithesis to Extraction. The zombie attacks range from piss easy to somewhat challenging, and use the old Rail Shooter problem of giving you one tenth of a second to shoot something before it hits you with a cheap shot, which will happen often. The Boss monsters, admittedly more diverse than Extraction’s Necromorphs, are unforgiving in difficulty, even in normal mode, and fight you back-to-back. Honestly, I had to fight three Boss monsters with no checkpoint. By the end, I only had my pistol, no herbs and a sliver of health. Speaking of weapons, in Darkside Chronicles your weapons stack. You can have four ready to go but the rest of your arsenal is only a pause screen away, and your ammo resets at the end of each chapter so there’s no need to be conservative with certain weapons. As stated before, the easy access to your weapons and reset ammo is balanced by cheap shot enemies, torturous Boss monsters, and the fact that your healing items also reset to zero at the beginning of each chapter. As a nitpick, there is no trick to make your weapons reload faster in Darkside Chronicles. Let’s say you are reloading your shotgun while two plant creatures are coming after you. You have to wait until you are done reloading your entire clip before you can fire. Think about that for a second. You are being attacked by monsters and you are taking five seconds of vulnerability just to load a shotgun? You can’t even reload two shells then fire, you have to willingly wait until nothing is attacking you to reload, which is most likely one second less than the time you need.
The environments are nicely done. Raccoon City has gone to hell, the sewers are wet, South America is a bit reminiscent of RE5’s Africa but the zombie piranha give it it’s own personal level of hell, and the Umbrella factories are a bit copy and paste but still exciting to play.
The writing is still your standard Resident Evil affair, the voice-acting still hasn’t improved for the most part, but it gets the job done. The cut scenes from a graphic standpoint, are exceptional and the in-game graphics are Wii quality, as in above PS2 but not good enough to be considered 360/PS3 quality.
In conclusion, Darkside Chronicles is a hard game, but it does have its selling points. For instance, I didn’t have to play Resident Evil 2 and Code Veronica and go through the stupid stories of both all the way. True, you will die a lot through some reload problems or because you didn’t fire fast enough but it’s not all bad.
Here is Competition 3rd place winner : Balthier’s review of Zuma’s Revenge (PC)
Congratulations to Balthier on a job well done.
Enjoy the read and let us know what you thought of it
–
Zuma’s Revenge! (PC)
Zuma is back, and better than ever. What is Zuma, you might say? Well, in case you missed this old gem, Zuma was a puzzle-action game developed by the genius PopCap (the same creator of Plants vs Zombies) and based on an old puzzle game called Puzzloop.
The goal is simple, you control a frog (who usually just sits in the middle of the screen) and you aim at the endless balls that come on a designed path, and for every match of 3 or more balls of the same color, they are destroyed. This is how you progress through the level, but it’s not all that simple. There are scoring techniques, fruits, power-ups and plenty of more things to help (or complicate) your journey just a little bit.
Zuma’s Revenge plays much better than it’s previous entry, with better graphics, sounds, music and replay value. Also, it’s a lot easier for beginner to be able to actually finish the main game this time.
Zuma’s Revenge offers 4 modes of gameplay: Adventure, Challenge, Heroic Frog and Iron Frog. Adventure is the main game, with 60 levels, and 6 bosses (totally new to the Zuma series). There’s plenty of challenge in this mode, but it is a lot easier and at the same time friendlier than the old Zuma.
By finishing the Adventure mode levels, you unlock them on the Challenge mode. On this mode you get to play the level, but this time there’s a timer AND a score goal to be met. This mode can be quite fun and addicting, I warn you.
Also upon finishing the main game, you unlock Heroic Frog and Iron Frog modes. Heroic Frog is like the harder (HARDER!) version of Adventure Mode, and will sure please old time Zuma fans, being very challenging (kinda like the old Zuma). Iron Frog is a new mode, with 10 unique levels (not found in the Adventure Mode), but there is a catch: you have to beat them all in a sequence and without loosing a single life. Yep, hard as hell (as we like!).
The graphics this time took a big leap from the old Zuma, with gorgeous backgrounds and overall better and nicer effects. I specially like how the new Zuma balls are designed, they look very funny indeed. The music also is pretty good, and the sounds (as usual in PopCap games) are quite ear pleasant and rewarding (in the sense that they really add to the game, like when you’re doing some combos you can hear the pitch of the sound effect increase with each combo, stuff like that).
Overall, this game is a blast. It has quality written all over it. The graphics are good, the story (the boss lines, specially) are just hilarious and the replay value is over the top. PopCap has done it again, amd if you happen to like puzzle games, don’t even hesitate to AT LEAST give the demo/trial a try. You won’t regret it.
This time around we didn’t have much interest, only a handfull of reviews were handed in. The decision this time wasn’t that hard. And as it’s a new year and im feeling very giving I’ve descided to give away prizes to the 3 contestants that took the time to enter : I have selected 1st 2nd and 3rd winners along with prizes to go along with them.
1st PLACE : RED TANK with his fantastic review of : ANNO 1404
2nd PLACE : KOGA88 with his great review of : RESIDENT EVIL THE DARKSIDE CHRONICLES
and
3rd PLACE : BALTHIER with his/her review of : ZUMA’s REVENGE
–
All reviews were great and a lot of work was put into them. I will be posting these reviews right here for everyone to read very shortly. The winners will be notified via email to claim their prizes. Once again thanks to everyone that participated and lets hope we have a few more entries next time around. Don’t forget you never know you might win a prize no matter what happens
You should be receiving your Free download code from Microsoft today via the email associated to your Xbox 360 Gamertag. Simply follow the instructions stated in the email to download your little Chocobo Avatar buddy.
Once you have downloaded him : To find your Chocobo..head to the Avatar editor, then Change My Style, then Props. Ta Da….there s/he is!
Let us know what you think of this cute little guy 🙂
Fishpond are having a great special at the moment. It’s now time to pre-order everything you want in the world of Xbox 360 games. Here are 3 of the most popular titles :
NOTE with all games you can get an EXTRA $10 off if you enter the promo voucher code : Ecogamer : YOU can only use the voucher ONCE per customer.
ALL PRICES ARE IN AUSTRALIAN DOLLARS and FREE SHIPPING to all over Australia !!
Click on the images to be taken straight to the order page to make your order !!
Mass Effect 2 TIN Collectors Edition : Only $109 – $10 = $99 with voucher code (shown above)
Mass Effect 2 STD edition : Only $83 – $10 = $73 with voucher code (shown above)
BIOSHOCK 2 – Rapture Edition : Only $103 – $10 = $93 with voucher code (shown above)
BIOSHOCK 2 – STD Edition : Only $83 – $10 = $73 with voucher code (shown above)
Tom Clancys Splinter Cell Conviction – Collectors Edition : Only $99.97 – $10 = $89.97 with voucher (shown above)
Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Conviction – STD Edition : Only $83.43 – $10 = $73.43 with voucher (shown above)
–
Grab these AMAZING SPECIALS before its too late the voucher promo code probably wont last long and neither will stock on pre-orders !! so get in QUICK !! and Grab yourselve a BARGAIN !! 🙂
Let us know what you you bought !! I’ve purchased all of these plus more !!
Inotia 2: A Wanderer of Luone will offer a Ranger class with new updated features
With Com2uS releasing the most fully-featured RPG on the iPhone, the gaming giant is once again raising the bar by adding updates with brand new content. Com2uS’ previous success with Homerun Battle 3D has shown the power of what updates can do. With over 10 updates Homerun Battle 3D has been able to transform the game into something that truly gives the users “what they want”. Com2uS has maintained a successful business strategy of absorbing user input and implementing the most interesting ideas into the updates. This has allowed Homerun Battle 3D to stay in the top charts months after its release.
Com2uS’ most recent game, Inotia 2, delivers an extraordinarily immerse role-playing game with features that have taken the best of all existing RPGs and perfected them. Inotia 2 contains loads of content with over 200 quests, a party system that allows you to control 3 characters simultaneously, a look system that gives you a unique look to your character with each equipped gear, and 5 classes to choose from. The game has also done something that has never been seen before in the iPhone RPG world which is an online matchup mode. The matchup mode allows users to battle against ghost characters which determines your rank on the online ranking system.
The main features that make Inotia 2 better than the rest of the RPGs on the iPhone are the multiple classes combined with the party system. With a simple click of an icon, a user can switch from an axe-wielding knight to a powerful mage. This allows different players with the exact same game to have a completely different experience than each other. To expand on the 5 classes: knight, magician, priest, thief, and templar, Com2uS has announced that they are now developing a sixth class, a new Ranger class.
The Ranger class has the ability to attack from the distance like a magician while dealing large amounts of damage like a thief. New designs for customized ranger equipment and weapons are also in the works. With the new Ranger class totaling 6 different class types and 3 members per party, a user will have 20 unique party combinations to choose from.
Along with the new Ranger class, Inotia 2 will be offering a variety of new items using Apple’s In-App Purchase system. From larger backpacks to stronger mercenaries, these special items will be available for users who want a little extra boost to their character. The new items and new Ranger update is expected to release early February 2010.
Inotia 2: A Wanderer of Luone is available on the AppStore, click on the BUY NOW to get your copy
