Game Talks

It’s a lot of fun to paint the town red in this black and white open-world game, but the weak stealth elements limit your options.
Sean Devlin is one tough Irishman. A single Nazi bullet may have ended the life of his best friend, but the protagonist of The Saboteur isn’t going to succumb to death’s waiting embrace nearly as easily. He absorbs rounds of German artillery like a plant sucks in sunlight, exhibiting an uncanny ability to regenerate his health in a way that would make even Wolverine envious. Despite the 1940s trappings–the dreary setting, old-fashioned weaponry, and painfully familiar foe–The Saboteur has very little in common with World War II. The strange thing is, once you get over the obvious clash between the real war and this over-the-top portrayal, The Saboteur is a really good time. It may not make a lick of sense that you can single-handedly shoot your way through a burning zeppelin, or dispose of waves of angry Germans with careless ease, but it’s so much fun that the ridiculousness of these situations only adds to the enjoyment. If you can get over a few rough spots and put your real-world knowledge of World War II to the side for a while, The Saboteur is a goofy reenactment of some of historys darkest days.

The Saboteur is an open-world game that lets you roam the streets of Paris at whatever pace you desire. The city is comfortably European, and does a good job of capturing wartime Paris. The world-famous landmarks are intact so you can visit the Arc de Triomphe or the Eiffel Tower when you need a break from the Nazi-killing action. Your main method of travel, when you aren’t running wildly down the somber streets, is a variety of cars pulled straight from the dawn of the automobile. They certainly blend in with the 1940s aesthetics, but their handling leaves a lot to be desired. They feel every bit as old as they look, which makes it difficult to quickly wind your way through these narrow streets or pull off a smooth hairpin turn during the many chase scenes. That isn’t to say the vehicle controls are broken; they’re just stiff, which makes the cars less fun to drive than they could be. You can also get around town by climbing straight up the sides of buildings. However, although this gives you a unique view of the City of Lights, it’s clunky and unsatisfying. Getting to the top only requires you to rapidly mash on the climb button, and it takes an awful long time to finally reach your destination. Thankfully, this is a mostly optional way to travel, so you can ignore it if the sluggish nature gets to you.

Hyborian Adventures is a massively-multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) based on the world and works of acclaimed author Robert E. Howard. In Age of Conan, players enter Hyboria with thousands of their friends and enemies to live, fight, and explore the dark and brutal world of King Conan.

Age of Conan takes place within the continent of the Hyborian kingdoms, a year after the events in Howard ‘ s Conan navel, The Hour of the Dragon. The character creation process is very deep and enjoyable. If you loved the creation process of City of Heroes/Villains then you will love this. The PvE content is great at the start with great voice acting until you get past level 20 and it gets worse every level. The combat in Age of Conan takes a different approach from the usual one we find in traditional MMOs. The “Real Combat” system is a first person melee approach in which every enemy has five different areas they can swing at. Combos can be performed by stringing together consecutive successful attacks in particular directions. The crafting system is terrible, there are not a lot of objects that you can make. PvP is sort of unbalanced and it gets boring quite quickly. Some of the content for PvP were not in the realease of the game, as well as content for the main game it self.

Panzer General: Allied Assault is not the game that you might remember. The beer-and-pretzels SSI wargame from the 1990s has been revived in name only for Xbox Live Arcade by Petroglyph Games, returning to life a decade after the fact as a card-based game. So although old-timers may initially be disappointed at not finding the turn-based strategizing and hexes of the original franchise, they should stick around for the game’s captivating matches set during the closing days of World War II. Mechanics are simple, but the gameplay is deceptively deep, only limited a bit by repetition when it comes to mission goals and battle terrain.

Who knew that the Greatest Generation fought its battles on perfectly arranged boards with giant dice sitting in the background?
In many ways, Panzer General: Allied Assault is more reminiscent of a set-piece WWII board game, such as the Memoir ‘44 board game, than its ’90s namesake. It’s Americans versus Germans in turn-based battles on what looks like a chessboard, with cards and dice rolls handling virtually all of the unit placement and fighting. Every scenario sees the combatants starting on opposite sides of the board with set victory conditions, such as taking over tiles in the enemy’s home row, conquering a percentage of spaces, wiping out all rival units, or taking the enemy’s home base. The game system is a no-muss, no-fuss arrangement where you play cards to place units and then move around the battlefields assaulting enemies and using cards to assist in combat. Playing cards costs prestige points, which are earned through conquering territory and removing it from your enemy after victorious battles. Cards are varied, and the deck consists of three different classes. Unit cards include paratroopers, artillery, and various types of tanks and armored vehicles. Action cards add a range of special abilities, such as the chance to sabotage the enemy hand and strip away cards or lay down pre-battle damage to bad-guy positions through strafing attacks and bombing runs. Combat cards provide bonuses during engagements, which are handy when you want to increase your offensive or defensive values or soften up the enemy courtesy of something like a hit-point-draining sniper attack.

Combat is surprisingly deep. Board spaces all come with unique terrain features that have dramatic effects on battles. So you have to be careful about attacking enemies in forests and on hills, because the pluses gained from these locations stack the deck against you when calculating battle results. You also need to watch out for no-go areas for certain types of troops. Planning an infantry assault that runs through a swamp tile, for instance, isn’t a smart idea. Tiles also have varying prestige value, so a town is worth more than a plain forest, for example. Units support one another from both adjacent and far-away tiles, making it a necessity to employ tactics when defending as well as attacking. Having a few howitzers in range of the enemy position being assaulted is key, as is surrounding the baddies with armor and infantry units prior to moving in. If you don’t layer your forces and take their attack abilities into careful consideration, you’ll quickly get chewed up by the enemy.

Black Nintendo Wii, are you one of those who really want to give hands on it? Knowing that it is a limited edition and currently just situated across Japanese borderline. Apparently Nintendo confirmed the black console will be available for Europe. Dated on November 6th, Eurogamers will be able to have the pack of black Wii, with matching Wii Remote, Nunchuk and MotionPlus peripherals along with copies of Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort.

Following with the new black bundle launch, is its November 20th general availability across Europe. But until now, there are no words on the price of the new bundle. Interestingly, we heard that the company will also be including a black version of the Classic Controller Pro that will be separately sold.

Although the Black Nintendo is confirmed for Europe heading back to U.S. is a different situation where Nintendo USA is still in secrecy if there will be a limited black version of Wii. Instead last July the company issued a statement no plans to have other colors of Wii in the US, which seems we can wait or not cross-fingers.

Everyone who starts playing the game eventually wants to know the same thing: how to increase your Runescape Accounts combat level fast. After all, all the best stuff happens when you have the right combat level!

You can wear better armour, use better weapons, finish more elite quests, and get access to better areas. Most certainly, you can make more money by killing bigger beasts, and killing them faster.

The common misconception about leveling in Runescape is that you should work on the highest possible level of monsters that you can kill in decent quantities. Since XP is based on the amount of damage you do, and that damage is based on the number of hit points the monster has, it is natural to conclude that it is better to fight the monsters with the higher combat level. But this is wrong, for at least two reasons.

First, higher combat in NPCs does not mean higher Hit Points. Many times it reflects higher Defence or ability to do damage to you, so not only are you not doing more damage, but you are actually taking more too. This means more trips for food or prayer potions, and that is not the way to faster leveling.

Second, tougher monsters take longer to kill, and even if they have more Hit Points, it might be taking you a lot longer to do the damage it takes to kill them. What counts is not the Hit Points per kill, but the Hit Points per hour that you are doing. After all, you measure the time you play in minutes and hours, and not kills.

When I was on my last few levels before maxing out my combat skills, I did a lot of slayer tasks to keep myself motivated. One thing that I did differently from everyone else was to turn in the tasks that would take too long to accomplish. This meant that I never bothered slaying metal dragons, even though there were some nice potential drops there. I know for a fact that if I had kept all those slower tasks that I would still be waiting to get my first 99 skill. As it is I have 4 now (you can check my character Erikfrombc on the high scores for proof).

So what does this mean for the beginning player? Simply put, start low and work your way up. Whenever I make a new character I start out with chickens and stay there for a while. Not only do I get fast levels, but I also get prayer XP for burying bones, feathers that stack and which I can sell for decent money and better weapons quickly, and cooking XP from the raw chickens that I can cook in the nearby cooking pot.