So the almighty Gamespot gave Spore a fairly hefty 8.0 out of 10, yet they said the early levels are lacking.

I couldn't agree less. The early levels are fantastic; perfectly balanced and great fun. They're so simple you could play them again and again. Mind you, you're looking in entirely the wrong place if you want some in-depth action (go play Civilization instead).

What Spore does it does amazingly well (it certainly tickled my boy parts, anyway). It's a great game that will keep the creature (and vehicle) designers busy for weeks and months to come...

Everyone should go out and buy it when it's released tomorrow. Or you can wait for my review in Thirteen 1 magazine next month.

Read the review by clicking here

Contrary to what you might think, it's not something from a horror porno (you've all got such dirty minds).

But I have lost a member of the family - for the THIRD time.

My poor XBOX Elite suffered from the "red ring of death" tonight, meaning a general hardware failure. Like Urethritis, it's a non-specific condition that covers a multitude of sins.

This is my FOURTH 360, which really isn't saying many good things for Microsoft. But I'm not happy - now I've got to go back to the shop and get a new one...

One last comment before I get the train (I know, it's 4:30 in the morning and I'm wondering if the gods invented dawn to punish man - it certainly feels like it!).

Anyway, yes. I played Guitar Hero for the first time last night. I'm in love. My fingers hurt and I've started liking songs I never knew I liked, but it's a hell of a game (now I know why it has sold so well). More updates on this new love affair as they develop.

I'm off to Paris today for Blizzard Entertainment's World Wide Invitational. It's a two day convention full of all things Blizzard. They'll be announcing a new game on Sunday (which I'm hoping is Diablo 3) and there'll be 48 hours of games and goodies - and previews of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King and Starcraft 2.

Personally, I'm just going for the free loot ('cos there ain't nuffink better than free stuff!).

By the way, if you're a burglar, I'll be back Tuesday afternoon, please try not to make too much of a mess of my living room when you nick my telly!

The long-awaited Spore Creature Creator is finally here, and while it's only a fraction of the potential of the final tool, it's still great fun.

You can check out the versatility of the tool with my blue meanies, the Frogloks (which is a name I made up and bears no resemblance to any other Frogloks that might exist out there).

 

And my Purple Oik is particularly cute!

 

The tool is great fun, and you'll be able to waste whole years of your life making up new and improved creatures.

Check out Spore (including the 250mb download) at: www.spore.com

I've got to stop talking about Dungeons & Dragons because lots of people that read my column have complained that they've no interest / understanding of the game whatsoever.

OOh that's a harsh (and somewhat telling) statement about the world's feelings for the world's most popular role playing game. 

Anyway, moving on from D&D Week, I'm going to do a short review of Crisis Core - Final Fantasy VII, which is out in the States and is due for release in the UK on 20th June. It's a prequel to FFVII and tells the tale from the other side of the fence (ie. from Shinra's perspective).

You play Zack Fair, a SOLDIER 2nd Class, performing missions in fully 3D environments, collecting materia and furthering the story of Shinra as it tries to make an army of super soldiers using the genetic manipulation of the entity known as Genova.

The graphics are probably the best on the PSP (yes, even better than God of War) and the sound captures all the music from the original game (for maximum nostalgia value). If that weren't enough, all your favourite characters are back for cameos, including Cloud, Aerith (sniff), and even the supremely annoying Yuffie.

Score: 9/10. If you're a Final Fantasy VII fan then this is unmissable. For everyone else it's a fantastic and much needed 3D action adventure on the PSP.

EA has released a new movie for the summer blockbuster game Spore. This is a short movie of the Primordial 2D stage where you're swimming in the ooze and trying to survive. 

Check it out by clicking here

It may not look like much from this limited movie, but trust me, the gameplay is compelling and the graphics are gorgeous. This is one title of 2008 that you're not going to want to miss.

I told a lie today. I'd just bought a stack of game books from a gaming store in Sheffield and a colleague asked me what the books were. Rather than explain, I replied (oh so casually) that they were graphic novels for a friend's birthday.

So that got me to thinking: are graphic novels less geeky than role playing game books?*

And: is it wrong to lie about your hobbies? I mean, I can imagine lying profusely if I was into train spotting (still a valid hobby for some), or if I had a rather large collection of Hello Kitty products, but gaming...

So, was it wrong of me? Am I ashamed of my gaming proclivities?

Should I just out myself at work as a gamer and have done with it? Should I be punished for my lies, and if so, how?

*Clearly, I think they are. There's a hierarchy of geekiness at work here:

Computer games > playing World of Warcraft > board games > graphic novels > comics > role playing games > stamp collecting > train spotting > monthly subscription to Trainspotter Monthly (trumps all).

Can you think of anything geekier?

I've just finished Dead Rising on the XBOX 360 and what a great game it is!

It is, quite frankly, far superior to the traditional zombiefests like Resident Evil. If you haven't played it, it takes all the basic elements of zombie mythology, and all the great movies (Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later), and merges them into a really terrifying blend of zombie action horror.

The story is this: photojournalist Frank West goes to an American shopping mall to cover the story of a riot. You, as Frank, have 72 hours to complete missions, unlock the main storyline, to rescue the few survivors, take photographs, and, of course, to stay alive. It's a horror action adventure, with role playing elements (in that you can level up and gain new abilities).

Wilamette Shopping Mall comes to life in the most minute detail in Dead Rising, and you'll really feel like you're trapped alone with tens of thousands of zombies for company. While I won't spoil the story, it really is sensational. Movie writers should take note: THIS is how to write a zombie story. 

But it's the bad guys (known as psychopaths) that are the highlight of the game. Never have I hated the boss battles so much - each boss evoked genuine feelings of loathing, pity, disgust, and anger in me. 

Sure, the game has its problems. There's a lot of backtracking in the shopping mall, NPCs have abysmally bad intelligence, and with a game so reliant on combat, Frank isn't as manouverable or skillfull as you would have liked. The steep learning curve makes the game particularly difficult and frustrating at first, and I almost didn't persevere after the first few hours of endless deaths. But once you realise how the game should be played (and it does have a unique style), things become a lot easier and you can settle into the wonderful horror of the game.

The graphics are truly fantastic with some of the best skin tones seen in a console game.

So, if you haven't checked out Dead Rising, you can get it quite cheaply these days. It might be tough to get into, but you cannot beat it for story, style, and most importantly, substance. It's only the second game ever to give me cabin fever (System Shock 2 was the other, if you're curious). Sure, I found plenty of niggles with the game (like Otis, the mission giver who calls you pretty much constantly on the radio - very annoying), but its positive qualities far outweigh any negatives.

Overall: 9/10 - Spine-tinglingly scary and genuinely chilling. Unmissable.

I'll be bringing news of the sequel - soon... 

Every so often a game comes along that’s so unique and wonderful that it almost defies description. In every generation there can be only one.

Oh, hang on, that’s Highlander. Or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Anyway, I digress. EA recently offered me the chance to visit their spanking-new offices in Guildford for an exclusive hands-on look at their opus, Spore. Up for grabs was an hour with the first Stage of the game and a session with the Creature Creator.

Describing Spore isn't easy. It’s one part creature simulator, one part god game, with a splash of real-time strategy added for good measure. It blends all these elements perfectly into a brightly coloured universe of your own making.

The game is made up of five Stages, the first being the Microbial Stage where you as a single-celled organism must fight for survival in the primordial oceans, but I’ll speak more of that in a moment. The second is the Creature Stage, which sees you evolved into a land-dwelling beastie. The third - the Tribal Stage – is where you build a race for your creature. The fourth – the City Stage - transforms your now thriving race into an empire where you do battle with other similarly evolved tribes across your world. The fifth and final game – the Civilization Stage – takes you into space where you can seek out (and conquer) strange new worlds and life forms, and to boldly go where no strange alien critter has gone before.

The First Stage - The Primordial Soup
It’s impossible to talk about Spore’s gameplay without referring back to the Creature Creator, which allows you amend your creature’s genetic code at any time. Through it you can alter any aspect of your critter from its abilities to its physical appearance. You’ll be using the Creature Creator a great deal throughout the game and its beauty lies in its simplicity, ease of use, and the sheer depth of things you can do with it. You'll use the Creator to change your creature on the fly, sometimes to give it new abilities and genetic traits, at other times to allow it to more efficiently perform a task you've set it. The Creator is at the heart of Spore's gameplay, but more on that later.

Each of Spore’s five distinct Stages plays very differently, and the first sees you as a single celled organism swimming in the two dimensional waters of your world. The primordial soup is teeming with life, and resources are hard to come by. To evolve, you have to consume as much food as you can, avoiding the larger critters and competing for the limited foodstuffs. Combat is fast and fun and you’ll find yourself fleeing from the larger, more evolved, organisms while battling it out with critters around your own size.

Spore is all about development and evolution and you’ll need every advantage to survive in this primal and primitive world. How you interact with your environment is up to you, for you can mould your tiny creature any way you see fit. Want him to eat meat? Give him a jaw (but you’ll have to battle other critters for food). Fancy a peace-loving herbivore? Then give him a filter for eating plankton. Want to be greedy? Then have both. The choice is yours.

You initially only have a few ways to customise your creature, but you’ll occasionally encounter an opponent that contains valuable DNA, or, in simpler terms, a genetic trait you don’t have. You can integrate this into your creature making you more evolved, and often, more powerful. Enhancements I found were jet propulsion, electricity field, poison sting, and a larger mouth.

Spore's attention to detail is exceptional, and of particular note is that you can see much larger creatures in the blurred distance behind you as you play, giving you a sense of the great scale of it all. As you consume food, you advance your Evolution Meter and when it reaches a certain point you expand to the next size, forever leaving behind the smaller, less evolved creatures. There are five or six of these evolutionary jumps in the first Stage and while they all play similarly, each represents your growth from single-celled organism to something much larger and more powerful.

By the end of Stage One my critter had a whopping great spike on its snout, two large carnivorous mouths, a poison gland, and an electric field generator. The more enhancements you give yourself, the larger and more cumbersome you become and the slower you move. I initially steered like a cow with all my endowments, but gave myself a nifty speed boost with the addition of four water jets. It’s a trade off between size and speed and manoeuvrability. You only have so many genetic points with which to empower your creature (so you can’t load them with every trait and advantage you possess), but you can sell back evolutionary traits to buy new ones.  

First Stage Summary
This first Stage feels incredibly atmospheric and evocative and could easily be a stand-alone game in its own right. The difficulty is spot on and the control mechanism is almost perfect. The ability to transform your creature at any time is a unique tool and you can (and probably will) spend hours refining your creation's abilities.

The Creature Creator
Rather than force you to play through each of the five Stages of Spore in sequence, EA has allowed you to jump straight into the action at any point. This is where the Creature Creator comes into its own. You can build a creature from scratch utilising the tool to build pretty much any type of beastie you require. Choose from a template of body parts to make up your critter, and once made, you can access the Creator again to amend each and every aspect of your creation. It really is THAT versatile. The sheer number of creature permutations is mind-boggling. If you can see it, you can alter its texture, size, shape, angle, or colour. You can change obvious things about your critter like its number of arms, to the small and subtle placement of its eyes. There are hundreds of different hands, feet, bodies, and faces available and an equal number of skins to make them look unique.

You can access the Creature Creation tool at any time (at the press of a key) to create pretty much anything you can think of. And once made, no matter how many legs, arms, or bizarre appendages you have, Spore's software will extrapolate its movement in an oddly appealing manner. Lastly, you can give your creature all kinds of sounds and emotes to fit their personality from the soft crooning of a pacifist to the warlike bellows of a warmonger.

Love at First Sight
I fell in love with Spore the moment the loading screen first flashed into life. The game is gorgeous and the beautiful and brightly coloured graphics will appeal to everyone, kids and pensioners alike. But if you’re into the dark and brooding then fear not, for due to the power of the Creature Creator, if you can’t stand all that cutesy nonsense, the tool will allow you to create drab and monstrous-looking creatures. It seems that those developers at EA have thought of everything!

Dumbed Down
A lot of people have worried about Spore being dumbed down. But that’s just not the case. Well, not entirely. The original intention was to have you play through all five Stages of the game in sequence, but now you can flit back and forth between the various levels at will. There are advantages and disadvantages to both ways of playing, but the open-ended accessibility grants more options for those gamers that prefer one particular Stage over another, or for people to hop straight into the Galactic Conquest part of the game.

Missions
There’s a lot more to do in Spore than just fighting for survival. For example there’s a story and objectives to complete. In the Galactic Conquest stage I found myself having to visit certain cities in my spaceship (that looked like a cute teddy bear) in order to prove to the locals that I was friendly. EA is keeping quiet on the overarching storyline but it looks interesting from what I've seen of it. Of course, you can forego the story and just blow any race you encounter to kingdom come, but there are always alternatives to fighting…

Friend or Foe
There are plenty of ways to achieve victory in the game. It’s not all about slaughter. You can make friends with other tribes (through friendship, trade, or threat of superior firepower), and you can fall in love. The amount of detail in the game is astonishing and your creatures have a wide range of different calls, emotes and ways of communicating.

Sporepedia
Everything created in Spore will be collected in the Sporepedia (http://www.sporepedia.com/) the repository of everything create by every gamer. Ever! You can visit it to look at the wealth of creations made by others, and download those critters, world themes, and styles to your own game. And then compete against them.

Summary
Spore is a one-of-a-kind game. It’s unique and fabulous and utterly intoxicating. I hope the gaming addiction wards are ready for this one because it’s going to draw an awful lot of people into its warm and appealing universe. I played the game for two hours and I barely scratched the surface. The amount of things you can create is limited only by your imagination, and when you can have a world themed around Christmas, or erotic-looking garden fruit, the world is quite literally your oyster.

I would have genuinely liked to have seen Spore contain some form of online PVP with other gamers, or at least a simulator that doesn’t necessarily destroy your world but allows you to pit your skills and creatures against other players. A missed opportunity, perhaps?

That said, Spore is a truly impressive game, perfectly polished with a rich and stylish theme throughout. It might not be hardcore enough for the serious gamers, but for everyone else, there’s enough in Spore to keep you creating forever…

It's not quite dead - yet - for Dungeons & Dragons has rolled a natural 20 to avoid fading into obscurit (oh, the nerdy gaming jokes are endless).

Publisher Wizards of the Coast is releasing the fourth iteration of the popular role playing game on 6th of June 2008, and they are celebrating the release with Worldwide Dungeons & Dragons Day on June 7th - just one short month away.

So if you're salivating for news of your favourite player class or race, you've only got a few weeks to wait.

Find out more about Worldwide D&D Day here.

It seems that Age of Conan has gone just the same way as Hellgate London as the 'open beta' code is plagued with bugs, installation problems, and crashes. Players are experiencing regular BSoD (blue screens of death), falling through the world, game freezes, and all manner of other niggling issues that should have been ironed out months ago.

In it's defence, Funcom insists that beta testers are using an OLD version of the game code and that the game will be substantially polished for release.

Regardless of whether that's true, people play betas for an early look at the game before they buy. It's like a demo, and they're going to be far less inclined to purchase a bugged and clearly unfinished game than they are something that plays beautifully and is optimised for every PC configuration known to man. Age of Conan is definitely not the latter.

With clear comparisons to Hellgate London's dismal launch, Age of Conan isn't far behind that in terms of needing six more months of development.

Like so many other games before it, it could have been so good, but instead it's a 70% complete game with major balance issues and requiring an awful lot of polish. The general consensus is that Age of Conan needed another three to six months' development time before release just to sort out the issues like falling through the world in key places.

We ALL know by now how important polish is to a game's release. If you polish it, people will play. Fail to perform that task and the game is doomed to obscurity.

It's just a terrible shame that Funcom's second major release may join the ranks of Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, Hellgate London, and Shadowbane, as games that could have been magnificient, but endless bugs and a total lack of polish destroyed any chance of them being a successful contender in today's highly competitive MMO market.

I'll have a full review soon, but right now, I'm concerned that what we're seeing is a clear indication of what we will (or won't) be playing in just 20 days' time.

I posted my Age of Conan Beta review just over an hour before the NDA went down.

Now, it's a fact that my column barely gets ANY hits at the weekend, and in the last year  I've had maybe thirty hits from the VN boards, but as soon as my column went live I started getting criticism for posting my review.

An hour early.

On a column that barely sees any hits over the weekend.

It was a simple mistake. I - obviously - never considered that anyone would actually look at my review. I thought people would only read it on Monday morning... I should have known better. This is the internet where any secret is unearthed in about five seconds.

Now I know if I read a review on a game that I really liked, I'd be grateful that someone had posted something - especially when it said: hold fire on buying this game until you read more reviews - I'd not be in arms about it, screaming and shouting how I couldn't be trusted or whether I should be prosecuted for breaking the NDA.

A simple email to me informing me of the fact would have been the considerate approach, not this raining hellfire down on me - which is pretty much what's happened.

I think it's all really petty. And totally losing sight of the big picture. It's an example of trying to help people (which is really all my review was about) and getting slapped in the face for it. 

Are people really are SO quick to jump on the offensive and to point the finger? Someone actually told me I couldn't be trusted, as though my posting a review an hour early was some kind of indication that I was a bad person.

Update: Someone actually thought it was reasonable to inform Funcom of my NDA breach! That anyone would do that is beyond reason. I actually find it shocking that someone would be so needlessly vindictive. But I guess people will always find ways to punish others, no matter how pure their intentions.

I think my faith in humanity has slipped a notch tonight... I wonder how many of those people think nothing of downloading an illegal movie or have illegal downloads on their PCs. 

Oh it's easy having the moral superiority when half the facts are concealed.

EA Mythic today announced details of the Warhammer Online Collector’s Edition. The over-sized box will contain the following goodies: European mousepad, the Librams of Insight - a three-use in game item that offers you a 10% XP bonus for 60 minutes, and twelve bonus quests that will offer additional in-game rewards (including a unique character title).

Give Me Head: Stand out in the crowd with a look unlike anyone else (except for the other 55,000 gamers who bought the Collector’s Edition) by choosing one of twelve unique bonus heads for additional character customization.

No Warhammer Collector’s Edition would be complete without an exclusive metal miniature and ‘Grumlok and his shaman Gazbag’ are no exception (assembly and painting required). Also packed into the box are the 224 hardbound Art of Warhammer book, and Warhammer: Prelude to War – a 128 page hardbound graphic novel that sets the stage for the start of the game.

Ordering online will net you the stat-boosting item: Guardian's Iolite Band that boosts your chance of doing spiritual damage, while ordering in-store gets you Sentinel's Amber Band (similar to the online pre-order item but gives you the chance to do corporeal damage).

If that wasn’t enough, all pre-orders receive Rittenbach's Portable Camp – an in-game healing device - and everyone is guaranteed both a spot in the open beta and access to the live servers days before the game goes on general release.

The Collector’s Edition is limited to 55,000 European units and while no UK price has been set, is retailing for around 79.99 Euros. Get more details at the official website.

I'm off to Connect08 tomorrow to do my write-up. Funny how I feel so nervous for just three hundred measly words. Clearly, size isn't everything...

Anyway. Ahem, yes. Check out UK IGN tomorrow from around noon to see my headline. But be warned: it'll be very short!

Visit IGN at the following URL: http://uk.ign.com/

If you're into gaming, and you love online gaming, then you'll know the 14th of March is Codemasters' first major event. Called Connect08, it's like a mini E3 and the the main story is that the developers of The Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar - Turbine - are making an exclusive press statement on the game's first major expansion. What will it be? Moria? Grey Haven? Or something even more fabulous? Only seven days to find out...

Of course, I'll be there to report on it all, only this time I'll be reporting for internet phenomenon IGN.

I'll have the low down early on the 14th, but if you want to check out Connect08, go their website and buy tickets. It's worth it purely for the goodie bags.

Check out Connect08.

I've been accepted into a beta for a very popular online game today.

Trouble is: the game size is rather hefty, and the download rate has plumetted to a measly 60k a second.

At this rate, the game will be out before I've managed to download it all.

Hmph 

So the 'Wizards' at Wizards of the Coast have released information on death in Fourth Edition. 

1. Characters die when their negative hit point total reaches -10 or one-quarter of their full normal hit points (whichever is larger).
2. If you’re dying at the end of your turn, roll 1d20. Lower than 10: You get worse. If you get this result three times before you are healed or stabilized (as per the Heal skill), you die. 10-19: No change. 20: You get better! You wake up with hit points equal to one-quarter your full normal hit points.

YAWN! How unoriginal. It would be much simpler for characters to die at -their Con and keep it at that. Quite why they choose to have these stupid and arbitrary systems in place boggles me. It's all so complicated and unecessary. And this total lack of originality is why the game is doing so poorly.

Oh well, that will be why I'm not writing for Wizards on Dungeons & Dragons, I guess... 

I've been looking around at the prices of the Nintendo WII - and I'm shocked to see the number of 'professional' companies who have hiked the price of the console for the holiday season.

Only Amazon and Toys R Us appear to have avoided the price boost - I've seen the consoles elsewhere for £279.99 - the same price as an XBOX 360 - all over the web.

It seems there are lots of unscrupulous company directors willing to take advantage of the lack of consoles - fleecing people for £100 more than the console is worth (actually it's nothing more than a recycled Gamecube - but I won't start on that again).

I think it's a shame that the Wii is so popular because, although it's a good fun console, it hasn't got the games or support of the 360.

If you want a console this holiday season - buy an X360 360. It's got so many great games - you really can't go wrong. And you can pick one up for the same price as a Wii!

I saw a Wii console - second hand - in one of those crummy "We Buy Your Goods for Cash" stores - for £279.99. Second hand! That's outrageous! But people will pay whatever price to get what they believe is 'the gift to own this Christmas'.

We've got Nintendo claiming this was all an accident and that lack of sales is bad for business. I scoff at that. Ex-price fixers Nintendo are clearly behind this ridiculous console shortage. Or does no one remember the eighty million dollars they were fined for price fixing only a handful of years ago? This was all carefully orchestrated, and the world fell right into their hands.

Genius. Unethical, but oh-so-genius. 

The very first screenshot from Star Trek Online has been released!

Looks quite interesting, doesn't it? No idea how it's all going to work and it probably will be terrible, but judge for yourself - courtesy of the Computer and Video Games website.

At least it's nice and colourful. 

You can see more concept art at the Star Trek Online website at http://www.startrekonline.com/gallery/

What, I hear you ask? Well 2 Moons is a Massively Multiplayer game that no one's heard of. And, if you're wondering why, it's because they do great things like sending me an email this morning, inviting me to take part in their special Winter Adventure...

Which started on Friday and ended yesterday. That's one hell of an on-the-ball promotion!

"TREASURE CHEST 

Fri, Sat, and Sun, a GM will randomly spawn treasure chests in hidden areas. Once hidden, the GM willmake <sic> a global announcement that they have hidden chests in a shard. Find the hidden chests to receive the unknown treasures inside!"

I know I'd really loved to have been hunting for treasure chests in a game no one's heard of. What's next for 2 Moons - weekend 'Watch Digital Paint Drying' contests.

My personal favourite, though, would be: "who can log out and forget about this game the quickest".

So, I'm currently addicted to Mario Galaxy on the Nintendo Wii. It's a great game, gorgeous, colourful, and plays beautifully. It's one of those games that's not too hard (unlike Mario Sunshine - which I gave up on for being too fiddly and difficult) and the control method is possibly the best I've seen for years.

While I really do not like the Mario character (an Italian plumber, what could be less dynamic?) - or the endless spin-offs - this game is fantastic. There's about 15 hours worth of game play here, and a lot more if you want to collect all 120 stars. Which I do.

Pros

• Gorgeous graphics that prove it's gameplay over graphics every day of the week.
• It's so atmospheric and addictive
• Plays like a dream. Other games should take note here.
• Beautiful level design  

Cons

• Limited graphics - not nearly "next gen" enough and really little more than a souped-up Mario Sunshine.
• No voiceovers. In this day and age, that's a bit pants.
• Some of the costumes you get are a bit fiddly to use. 

SCORE 9/10. Nintendo have created a perfectly balanced and wonderful universe in which to explore. Sadly, not a smidgeon of innovation, but with a game as great as this, who really cares?

I also have to say, somewhat reluctantly, that I've voiced my concerns about the Wii for months now. I still maintain that it should have been a noticable graphical push, but with games like Mario Galaxy about, I can finally see the strengths of the console. It may not feature in glorious 1080p high definition, but most state-of-the-art games should sit up and notice. It's game play, atmosphere and character that a great game make.

Just in case you were dithering about buying Hellgate London, here's a list of what the developers are working on. It's a worryingly long list of bug fixes.

• Resolving any remaining problems related to billing and subscriptions.
• Fixing two known bugs which cause players to sometimes lose items (one related to dual focus/dual melee, and one related to loading issues). 
• Making improvements to memory usage in order to reduce "Memory Exhausted" crashes. 
• Fixing a known issue with the user interface which causes the application to lock up intermittently.
• An issue which occasionally prevents characters from being able to load or switch instances.
  
• General chat interface improvements, (many improvements are in the works). 
• Random disconnects and lag.
  
• Allowing higher resolution textures and models for other players.
  
• Various known problems with being able to continue interrupted side quests.
  
• Remnant quest items not getting destroyed and "clogging" up inventory.
  
• Continued problems with saving / loading Engineer Drone items.
  
• Invisible party members. 
• The nanoforge not correctly improving rare and better armors. 
• Getting stuck on collision. 
  

I get the feeling this game was released WAY too early. And half the systems weren't tested. I hear one gamer subscribed, to be charged NINE times! Unforgivable.

My advice: don't make up your mind - yet on whether to buy this game. Come back in January. Warhammer Online will still be a few months away by then. This game has the potential to be glorious. Until then, developers everywhere take note:

MAKE YOUR GAMES WORK BEFORE RELEASE.

It's a pretty simple rule, really. Wonder why so many companies fail to stick to it!

Ok so it's not MY review - that'll be in next month's Shivers Magazine, but this is the next best thing.

A very amusing (and oh so true) review of the game. With comments like: "Billing adventure puzzle! Sometimes we charge you $9.99 every month, and sometimes we charge you $9.99 every single day. Keep a close eye on your credit card activity and enjoy this extra layer of gameplay. The fun doesn't stop when you turn off the game or when it crashes you to your desktop!"

Go here to see the review at SomethingAwful.com

The war is on. Well, not really. But Hellgate London and Tabula Rasa (the game, not that crap episode of Stargate Atlantis from the other night) are both officially in the gaming charts.

Naturally, being a far better game, Hellgate London stands at #3 in the best selling games of the week while Tabula Rasa flounders at #8.

I found it a bit strange that Tabula Rasa - a hugely (over) publicised MMO - has only got 4 servers at release. That's a pitifully small number compared to - well - any game other than Dungeons & Dragons Online.

Hellgate London only has two, but they're those weird super instanced servers - one for the US and one for Europe. Not sure how that equates to actual gamers but the stations always seem very full of players - especially at peak times. 

I guess we'll see in time which game wins - but for me, the contest is already over. Despite its many bugs, balancing issues, and niggly flaws, Hellgate London is a masterpiece of gaming. Or rather, it will be. Maybe. One day.

It's got so much potential for greatness. The whole subscription thing rankles, though. Especially as it's so much more expensive for a UK subscription than a US.

But the UK always gets shafted, especially in gaming, so I should stop moaning and accept it.

Or move to Florida.

Mmmm - sunny.

With all these new state-of-the-art computer games coming out (like Crysis and Portal), it's funny that the game I most love at the moment is anything but high-tech.

Puzzle Quest combines the gameplay of Bejewelled with fantasy role playing elements and is quite literally the most addictive game I've played in years.

You choose your class and journey around the world map performing quests, levelling up, and, of course, engaging in combat. You do this in the standard way, through the tried-and-tested Bejwelled board, with jewels of various colours that you've got to match up to destroy them. Three in a row earns you a portion of magic of that colour, four gives you an extra turn, and five or more have random effects. You and your opponent take it in turns to match up colours, and set up three skulls to take a portion of your enemy's hit points. The first one to lose all their hit points dies.

But it doesn't just stop there. Your character has a class and accompanying magical powers. My wizard can blast away a 3 x 3 area of the game board with his fireball spell, or can cause direct damage to my opponent with a blast of fire. 

There are lots of statistics to tinker with, magical items to collect, and all sorts of other rpg elements (including multiplayer - you can even capture opponent towns). 

It's oh-so-simple but yet utterly addictive.  The Summoner Chronicles might not be out on time this year because <ahem> well, I'm too busy with other projects...

But seriously. Check out Puzzle Quest - Download the demo at their website

Speaking earlier about Tabula Rasa - I just had an email from Richard Garriott (Lord British himself), telling me I've just got time to get into the Tabula Rasa beta.

I'm sorry, I hadn't heard that the five hundred other times I've been emailed that message in the last eight weeks.

For a below-par game which is below average in every respect, this is yet another in an ever-increasing number of desperate emails from Play NC to garner interest for these games.

I just want this game to be released now so I won't get any more of these emails.

Although... I'm sure after when they've got a handful of players, the message will change to "come visit us in Tabula Rasa, and get a free funny hand shake"...

Or something.

I wasn't going to complain about it but really, it's a rubbish game. There are problems with just about every aspect of the game, from the engine to the server side of things. I'm even less inclined to play a game when I'm getting emails bugging me about it every half an hour. 

I'm actually expecting a Play NC representative to turn up on the doorstep any day now. 

Hellgate London, which a fantastic game, has some unforgivable bugs, and after the atrocity that was Asheron's Call 2, haven't developers realised YET that if they release an unfinished game with no polish, that no one will play it. 

Even though I'm getting endlessly spammed about Tabula Rasa, Hellgate London is the only game I care about - let's hope the developers come through for the grand launch next week.

Anyone would think Richard Garriott really wanted his new sci-fi shooter Tabula Rasa to do well - because I've been bombarded by emails, at least five a day, for the last week from various companies trying to promote it.

• Fileplanet keep telling me how fantastic the end of beta event will be (plus a free emote available onto to beta subscribers - woohoo).
• I've had emails telling me that it's still not too late to get into the beta.
• I've had emails telling me about the exciting release of Tabula Rasa and how exciting it's all going to be.

You'd think PlayNC was a master of spin, because all these emails for a game I can't even access (I've downloaded it twice and I still get error messages telling me the servers are offline) - it's a bit of a bust, really.

But, hey, I guess no one will mind me saying that there's still time to get into the Tabula Rasa beta.

If you hurry, you can get in now and have access to that fabulous beta emote (which you can cherish forever and ever).

You can find out more at the PlayNC website. 

I've got a bunch of brand-spanking new Hellgate London Beta Keys to give away.

If you fancy playing this game for the next week (it's released the week after), drop me a line by emailing: arikostinaal at hotmail.com.

First come, first served. 

It's rare when you load up a game for the first time to find that it's exactly what you're looking for. It's like putting on a really comfy pair of shoes that fit you perfectly (and look cool, too!).

Hellgate London is set in the streets of ruined London, after an apocalpytic battle that's left zombies, monsters, and demons roaming everywhere.

Hellgate London is a fantastic game, fast-paced with lots of action in its horror-sci fi setting.

I've not played a great deal (to avoid spoiling the game for its release on Hallowe'en) and this is a mini review (saving the full one for magazines) but the engine is robust, the skill system gives you lots of options, and the whole game really is an awful lot of fun to play.

If you've ever played Diablo, then you'll have an inkling that this game is similar in many ways. In fact, the random quest areas, the inventory system, and the skill system are identical. But that's not a bad thing.

Unlike the recent raft of bug-riddled games currently on sale, Hellgate London is surprisingly bug free. While there are a few glitches, the game runs very nicely (although there's rumoured to be a memory leak - which the developers are fixing). As this is another of those "Massively Multiplayer Online Games", you can hook up with your friends and quest together, but to get the really special features, you need to subscribe, which currently works out at $9.99 a month, or if you're unfortunate enough to live in Europe, 9.99 euros. Not sure how much longevity the game has to warrant a subscription. Let's hope the developers can keep on churning out monthly content to keep monster hungry gamers paying.

Overall: 9/10. An exciting game with a promising future. If you like your zombies dead, your demons ravenous, and the action thick, then Hellgate London is definitely the game for you.

Find out more at http://www.hellgatelondon.com/ 

What a great game Portal is - the sort of expansion / puzzle game for Half Life 2.

Really makes you think, a short, but exceedingly fun game indeed.

Find out more about Portal by clicking here.

I've been trying to finish Bioshock on the PC for a few weeks now, and to be honest, the going has been tough. After following its development patiently for the last three years, when it arrived it was something of a disappointment. Don't get me wrong, Bioshock is a beautiful and wonderful game - a testament to the skills of the next generation developers. It's atmospheric and scary and utterly immersive, but it's just not enough of all of those things to properly hold my interest. Yes, I finished it, but I thought my time in Rapture (the undersea city where the game takes place) was all a bit of a let down.

It all stems back to System Shock 2, the precursor to Bioshock. Made by (pretty much) the same people who made Bioshock, I had high hopes. System Shock 2 was a game that set you trapped on a spaceship when everyone else was dead. It was terrifying, action-packed, and full of gritty (and original) story.

After the wonders of System Shock 2, Bioshock wasn't really enough to capture my attention. It felt hollow somehow, as though the developers had tried to recapture what was great about SS2 and in doing so, had made an entirely watered down game. 

Perhaps it's my overly high expectations of next gen gaming which is colouring this review. But it set its sights on being so very large, so open-ended and so dynamic. But it felt like none of the above. It's also horribly linear, and there's practically no diversity in enemies or encounters. The storyline is right out of System Shock 2 and I found the whole ending - the big twist - hugely disappointing.

That said, Bioshock is a brilliant game. It's well-written and - I can't say it enough - utterly engrossing. If you've not played System Shock 2 then you'll find this game hugely exciting.

Does it deserve Game of the Year? Absolutely not. That accolade should have gone to System Shock 2 all those years ago (although the game came and went with barely a whisper).

If you're looking for something really terrifying, play F.E.A.R. Or better still, go back and play System Shock 2. With the recently released high resolution patch it looks great, not as stunningly, eye-dropping-out gorgeous as Bioshock, but still one of the best games I've ever played.

Overall: 8. Slightly disappointing. Gorgeous, brilliant, alluring, but nothing I've not seen (or played) before.

Dungeons & Dragons Tactics is a bizarre little game. On one hand I wonder how these games ever get made (for reasons to be explained below), and on the other, it's very clear why: Dungeons & Dragons is a massive licence, with millions of gamers worldwide and countless titles already in existence, every computer gaming company wants a slice of the pie.

But in this case, it's a rather strange pie; probably something like pomegranate and broccoli, or apple and aardvark. Regardless of the flavour, there's definitely NO meat in this game. Unless it's rump of Lurker, or something (only the ge-D&D enthusiasts will get that one).

Tactics is a top down role player where you guide a party of up to five heroes through various environments (dungeons, crypts, wilderness, etc.) on an epic quest through all twenty levels of game play. It all looks rather nice and it has great sound with a lovely soundtrack.

But here's the thing: the game's interface is dire. There's just no other way to say it. It simply is the worst interface I've ever seen in any game. Ever. Managing pretty much every aspect of your characters is painfully difficult, and the whole control system is incredibly frustrating. It's impossible to see vital information (like hit points); the game world is hard to navigate, and there's no dungeon map facility. There are monsters early in the game with overly high Armor Class ratings, meaning battles take forever to complete as they can't hit you and you've got precious little chance of hitting them back. 

All of these features make it a painful game to play. The whole game is counter intuitive and there are so many titles around that have FAR superior systems. The developers could have stolen any one of a hundred better control systems.

Sadly, though, beneath the horrible interface is a substandard game that's barely worth playing even if you're a Dungeons & Dragons fanatic. Even if you're patient enough to persevere with some of the game's more offensive design flaws, you're still going to find the game unpalatable.

The only thing in its favour is that its got mind flayers. Which is a +1 in anyone's book.

Overall: 3/10. Needlessly frustrating. A passable game that could and should have been so much more.

A review is coming, but if you've not yet played this most amazing and immersive game on Xbox 360 and PC, you're missing out.

It's probably the finest, most well-crafted, and atmospheric game ever made.

Find out more by visiting the Bioshock website.

Cast your mind back two years to when Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft were about to be released. At that time, Everquest was the world's most successful MMO in the world with literally a quarter of a million players subscribed at any one time. How times change.

Now, Everquest 2 is suffering; it has a tiny fraction of Warcraft's playerbase, and I wanted to know why.

So, I went back to revisit the game two years on - only to found out one very disturbing fact.

The game is brilliant. Not only does it look gorgeous, it plays beautifully, has all the features that WOW does (and a lot more besides). It has voice overs, housing, a card game, endless monsters, some truly beautiful zones, and some very interesting quests...

But, the biggest pull for me: the developers actually develop for Everquest 2. There has been a SLEW of new content since the game was released, expansions, mini-expansions, content patches, free stuff.

What have we had for Warcraft? A half-finished expansion, and a bunch of raid dungeons a disembowled badger to code just by dragging itself across a keyboard! 

I've been enthralled with Everquest this weekend, and can't wait to get back to Norrath for a longer examination of the new game. Gone is all the stuff that was rubbish (like class paths and all that confusing stuff). They've hugely expanded PVP and they've polished off just about everything in the world.

It's the ugly duckling that has transformed into a class game that can easily stand toe to toe with Warcraft.

So, why is no one playing it?

Well, after much thought, all I can say is that it's inaccessible to new players. The graphical requirements are steep indeed, and unless you've got a meaty PC, the game might drag a little.

But that's no excuse. Really, there's so much to see and do, it's baffling why more people aren't making the exodus from Azeroth. In this lull between games, consider this the best time to try it out.

You can check out the 7 Day Free Trial by clicking here

Warhammer Vault - the company for whom I write a gaming column, is holding a whopping competition.

They are giving away 10 North American Beta Keys - and all you have to do is match the images to their screenshots on the two Warhammer websites.

Sounds easy (believe me it's not), there are a lot of screenshots and the test requires the eyes of a hawk and nerves of steel (or at least a fairly robust cardboard).

Remember, these beta keys are rarer than a high school jock at a Role Playing Games Convention, so you don't have long to act. 

If you've got the time and patience, head on over to Warhammer Vault to find out more.

Warhammer Online beta keys are the new gold dust...

People have been lusting over them since beta began, and do you know what - I think there's a better way for companies to allow people to get their grubby mitts on a beta key:

They should sell them online - with all the proceeds going to charity.

They could set up schemes, whereby they sell, say, 1000 accounts at a time, with all the proceeds going to various charities.

Now, you could sit in the queue and wait to be invited to beta (for free), or the eager beavers could buy their way into beta.

It would also mean no more Ebay sales, as you'd know just how much a beta account was worth and that if you missed a round, another one would be available very soon.

It's a win-win. Everybody benefits, and the gaming industry gets to do something good for the community.

Can't see it happening any time soon, though.

Foreward: I love my online games, and, as you may already know, I'm extremely unhappy with the World of Warcraft has been run over the past three years. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game which looks beautiful, but I'm after more from my games. I'm after something to stimulate me - not the same mindless quests repeated from 1st to 70th level. I want thoughtful ideas and meaningful quests - not endless time sinks. I want exciting adventures and fun PVP, and a game that isn't driven by items obtained on raids that take weeks to organise...

I accept that I would never get that from a Blizzard game (although I still have hope). I feel ripped off and conned by Blizzard and I can't understand why other people can't see it, either.

If you're a Warcraft fan, then skip this update. You probably won't like it and you definitely won't agree with it.

Now, read on...

So, it's Blizzard's yearly promotional convention this weekend (Blizzcon) and for the one person in Outer Mongolia who doesn't know, Blizzard have announced their second expansion for the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King.

These are just some of the exciting additions in the new expansion:

• Master the necromantic powers of the Death Knight - World of Warcraft's first Hero class.
• Quest to level 80, gaining potent new abilities and talents along the way.
• Learn the craft of spell augmentation with the new Inscription profession.
• Brave the harsh new continent of Northrend, the icy domain of the Lich King.
• Engage in epic siege warfare, deploying mighty siege engines to lay waste to destructible buildings in your path.
• Transform your hero's look with new character-customization options, including new hairstyles and dances.
• Explore perilous new dungeons filled with some of the deadliest creatures -- and greatest treasures -- on Azeroth.
  

So basically, Blizzard are giving us stuff they promised FREE more than two years ago. We're finally getting Hero Classes, or rather, we're getting ONE Hero Class. Apparently, you have to do an epic and arduous quest (a.k.a. visiting every instance you ever had the misfortune of visiting) in order to unlock this new Hero Class, which, instead of being an extension of your MAIN character, is, unbelievably, a NEW character class with new powers that starts the game around level 60.

Blizzard has spiced up the game a bit by proclaiming the Death Knight is for 'advanced' players only. OOH!

So, where is our elementalist Hero Class, or Lich, or our Demon Hunter? Well, nowhere to be seen, it appears, 'cos if Blizzard can get away with not coding it, they most certainly will. 

I find this typical of Blizzard. It's always too little, too late, and in this case, it's always the path of least resistance. Blizzard never innovate, they simply provide the least amount of content they possibly can do while they can get away with it. The Burning Crusade was barely an expansion, yet people lapped it up. A few unfinished zones does not constitute a proper expansion - and certainly not after two years' wait...

And yet, despite all of this, there are still more than nine million people playing.

If you bought a book and the last hundred pages were blank, you'd not expect to have to pay a dollar a month to get those extra pages! Nope. You'd expect the whole book when you bought it, or it would go straight back to the shop.

Yet still people are playing Warcraft. 

Boggles the mind, really.

What surprises me the most is how much Blizzard has made the game more in line with Warhammer Online. We all know it's just around the corner and it's a serious threat to Warcraft. I've not heard a bad word from any of the beta testers and as we know, if it's even a tiny bit better than Warcraft, millions will make the switch. 

So, Blizzard has a very good reason to be afraid, and as such, they're revamping their PVP in order try and improve it. They've not got a hope in hell, Blizzard's developers haven't got a clue how to rework their PVP so it's good, but by all means let them try.  

Blizzard just doesn't know about innovation.

Maybe someone should send them a dictionary with the word highlighted in yellow marker... 

Found out more about Wrath of the Lich King

I was fortunate enough to be among the few to be able to go to the Star Wars: Force Unleashed demo session at the Star Wars Celebration on 14th July 2007 in London (full review / write up on Wednesday).

The main producers, writers, and developers were there, and I felt a report on this mysterious game was long overdue. Of course they asked us not to say anything about their game, but advice to developers: tell us something interesting and people might not feel vindictive after wasting an hour of their time on a pointless preview session (at LEAST give us free stuff!)

So I’m going to tell you what I learned, which actually isn’t a great deal.

Although we were treated to a very exciting new trailer (which I cannot show you as recording devices were prohibited - but you will have seen on the web since then) we didn’t learn a great deal of new information. The developers were exceedingly cagey about revealing, well, anything that we couldn’t have guessed. In fact, we could have probably got them to reveal their saucy man-bits rather than give up anything but the most rudimentary details of the game.

So, what did I learn?

• The game takes place a number of years after Episode 3 and is a full and beautifully written story which make sense of everything that happens in Episode 4.
• That the graphics you’ve seen so far are like NOTHING seen in game. The finished game will be so much better.
• That the main character is Darth Vader’s secret apprentice (actually known in game as Vader’s secret apprentice).
• The voice actor playing the Vader’s Secret Apprentice is Sam Witwer, better known as “Crashdown” on Battlestar Galactica.
• That you are the most powerful Force user ever to have lived. In the demo, when you pull down the Star Destroyer, this is just one of your many powers.
• That there is a new character – a Jedi Master called General Kota (a samurai-type Jedi) who will help you.
• When you start playing, Vader has informed you to ‘leave no witnesses’, so to protect your identity, you have to murder anyone who you meet (he’s such a warm and loving family guy).
• You have a love interest called Juno Eclipse played by English actor Natalie Cox.
• You have a robot side-kick who is very funny (but not in a camp C3PO way).
• That you have been raised as assassin the hand of Vader and you have no opinions of your own. But as you interact with Juno and your robot droid (both of whom have strong opinions on the world) you will find your own inner voice.
• You start the game hunting down Shaak-Ti, the rogue Jedi who was shown as dying in the deleted scenes of Revenge of the Sith, but who officially is not dead as George Lucas (who has backed the game enthusiastically) has said if it did not make the final cut then it is not canon. So there you go, she escaped and is out in the universe somewhere, kindly waiting for you to hunt down.
• The Jedi aren’t doing so well. The few that have remained are being systematically hunted down by you and Vader.
• You’ll be able to visit Kashykk, which, like the Jedi, hasn’t been doing so well. The Empire is strip-mining it and the wookiees aren’t too happy (having being enslaved and all).
• Different versions for consoles. The game will have additional content in all versions of the game and different locations to explore.
• There’ll be multiple endings to find and one of them will be the actual canon (George Lucas approved version).
• No Wii or PC version at release. But as with these things, the developers usually release a PC version eight to twelve months down the line.
• There will be a full multiplayer element. The developers understand how important it is to not only beat up on half the universe, but that it’s also ultra cool to be able to beat up your friends online!

What you really want to know about it the Force powers. Well, there are many and they are indeed powerful. In addition to the normal powers, you’ve got a Force Grip, which not only allows you to toss around Stormtroopers, but you can attack whole groups, pick up TIE Fighers and toss them around, and generally wreak havoc on the universe. There’s a chain lightning force power that arcs from enemy to enemy, and all kinds of new and juicy powers (mind you, most of them aren't new as Knighs of the Old Republic used many of these 'new and innovative' powers years ago).

And the engine has been rewritten from the ground up. There’s a new system that models real world items, so glass will break realistically, cloaks will flow, and things will generally break when you hit them.

Overall, it looks like a great game, but then, from the very short amount of actual footage and hard information, it’s nearly impossible to make a judgement. These things are always hyped out of proportions, and Lucasarts aren’t exactly known for making great Star Wars games.

It’s a shame Bioware aren’t making this game, but I’ll still be watching it very closely for its release in 2008.

This week's column is now live.

Its all about the classes of Warhammer 

You can see it by clicking here

Whooppee! Just what I always wanted, another beta invite to yet another hackneyed Korean MMO.

Now, I'm not slagging off the Koreans, but COME ON, give us something new instead of the same old and tired versions of the same old and tired games.

I'm sure they've got development companies churning these things out like we made boy bands in the '90s. 

Anyway, go see Sword of the New World for yourself.

But don't say I didn't warn you!

I'm actually proud to announce my new column for IGN and Warhammer Online.

It's called Warhammer Offline, and it will be my thoughts on the world of Warhammer, Massively Multiplayer Games, and, most importantly, Warhammer Online (due for release in 2008).

I really hope you like it.

The first few will be fairly quiet and unassuming (while I sort out my style) but once it gets going, there are some real rants in there.

Enjoy Warhammer Offline

If there's anything you want me to investigate / rant about / discuss, then get in touch.

I was so very enthusiastic about The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar, but lately I've been finding it tough to motivate myself to log in.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great game, but it's just TOO MUCH like World of Warcraft for my liking. The quests are fun and the world is gorgeous, but it's all just so much of the same (old) thing.

And then it hit me: I have MMO ennui.

I've been playing Massively Multiplayer Games for so long, I've officially become jaded.

After all, how many times can you do the same types of quests or play the same types of characters?

In a pen & paper role playing game, the world and the setting and the characters are all very different and every adventure is unique, but it's much more limited in a MMO.

So, I'm officially tired.

I want something new, something exciting, something that pushes the boundaries of gaming. Something that plays like Warcraft but has a completely new feel with a brand new way of doing things.

But my expectations are so very high.

Looking to the horizon, we've got Age of Conan, and the delicious Warhammer Online. Will either of those games provide the fix I'm looking for?

I sincerely doubt it.

Will I ever be in love with a MMO again, or are those days long gone?

Can ANY game bring back the feelings I had when I first logged in to Asheron's Call all those years ago? It was love at first sight!

I know I'm not bored with games in general as I'm currently having a sordid love affair with God of War 2 (see my review in an earlier post) and an even steamier affair with Final Fantasy III on my (pink) DS (review to come).

Maybe my days of wasting an entire evening on a MMO are long gone.

Maybe what my mother said to me all those years ago was true and it WAS just a phase...

Whatever happens, I will be closely looking to the future.

Developers take note! I want my love affair back! 

So, Wizards of the Coast released their new sourcebook this week. It's called Complete Champion and it's for Dungeons & Dragons.

Now, I've not written a Dungeons & Dragons book in years; I've been a bit too busy, but after they stole my best ideas in their Libris Mortis book (which was thankfully another load of unrealised crap! Developers - if you're going to steal ideas, at least make sure you know where you're going with them!), I felt I needed to keep a close eye on this one.

I needn't have bothered.

It's just another old and tired gamebook containing nothing new or exciting.

Wizards, get your fingers out and write something fresh and wonderful and not the same old extensions of powers and abilities like you've been doing for all these years.

It made me realise just how little innovation there is in the gaming industry, both table top and computer gaming.

It almost makes me want to finish my 70% Powers of Light book... 

Maybe I should start up a 'Who Would Buy This Book?' poll. 

But seriously. New powers and abilities is NOT all these sourcebooks are about. You CAN write about other stuff you know... 

So Blizzard's new game is Starcraft 2.

While the entire population of Korea gasps in orgasmic frenzy, the rest of the world breathes an audible sigh of apathy.

I think we were generally expecting something... well, exciting!

While I love the whole RTS thing, I have to admit I'd have been much happier with Warcraft 4.

Or something new and exciting. 

But no. Starcraft 2 is what we get.

And there was no World of Warcraft expansion details, no Diablo 3 information.

Come on, Blizzard, get your act together! 

Find out more at www.blizzard.com

There's been much speculation, and Blizzard's PR department has been working in overdrive, but the time has almost come to reveal their new game.

For the past week the Blizzard website has been teasing us with details of their old games.

We've seen:

• WarCraft: Orcs & Humans
• StarCraft
• Diablo 2
• WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos
• World of Warcraft

What will their new game be? My money's on Diablo 3. At least I hope so!

We'll find out everything on Friday. 

Visit Blizzard's Website

I'm not sure there are enough Massively Multiplayer Online Games on the market.

I think we need another...

Clearly, Funcom have heard my pleas and announced their mysterious new real world / horror MMO yesterday.

It's called: The Secret World, and there's an even more mysterious website counting down to something.

Visit the Teaser Website by Clicking here.

Read the press release here. 

But why are still playing this homogeous and uninspired game? Is it that people flock to the lowest possible denominator , the path of least resistance to entertainment, or it could just be that there's no other game to come close to matching WOW's playability. 

Wow, this is pretty nice.

A one-off golden Nintendo DS. Entirely droolworthy. And if you live in the US, it could be yours for only $610 (or thereabouts).

Zelda on Ebay

Oh no.

Really, just OH NO!

Words fail me!

Blizzard Knows No Limits

I tried to make a joke here, but I just couldn't. There were too many and they were all too cutting.

I'm a bit bemused and puzzled over this one. Sony apparently went a bit far at the God of War 2 launch event - by having a freshly-slaughtered goat in full view of the guests, who were invited to “reach inside its still-warm carcass to eat offal from its stomach”.

Topless girls added to the "Greek Orgy" atmosphere, while a male model portrayed Kratos (the game’s hero).

 

 

This all sounds entirely un-shocking to me so far.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare said the stunt was "outrageous", and that the animal’s death had been used "to sell a few computer games".

A representative for Sony said that the goat was not slaughtered for the event and was purchased from a local butcher. People were not eating the goat's intestines - it was in fact stuffed with warm offal.

Here's a 'safe' picture of the 'bleeding' goat. 

The Daily Mail says that 'subscribers, who already have received Official Playstation Magazine, have been subjected to the shocking images across two pages of the magazine, which has been recalled from shelves'.

The two page spread shows more vivid pictures from the event under headlines such as "Topless Girls!" and "Flesh Eating!"

Topless girls in an adult game! Goodness. Oh the travesty of it all! So there are some naked breasts, and a bit of pixilated blood. Hardly anything to make me run out, strip naked, steal a sword and start hacking into the neighbors.

Sony describes God of War 2 as "an adult-rated, fast-paced bloodbath – and enormous fun to boot", adding that it is "bigger, better, and as brutal as ever".

The Aftermath: Sony, which released the game in the UK on Friday, admitted that the stunt had been a mistake. In a statement it said the following:

• "Sony does not condone or sanction any inappropriate behaviour by its staff or sub-contracted staff.
• "It has come to our attention that at the God Of War 2 launch showcase, an element of the event was of an unsuitable nature.
• "We are conducting an internal inquiry into aspects of the event in order to learn from the occurrence and put into place measures to ensure that this does not happen again."

Update: Since writing the report, I've heard from guests of the event that "What purported to be warm intestines was actually warm offal". So it's a bit gross and probably highly inappropriate for these sensitive times, but it's hardly shocking to the point of outrage!

Sony is this weekend recalling the entire 80,000 print run of the magazine and the offending article will be removed because of the "sensitivity of the general public over issues of animal welfare" - so people will complain about the alleged death of a goat, but no one cares about the shocking waste of 80,000 pieces of high-quality paper!

In Summary: One can only wonder if the world has gone mad. After all, people will seemingly shout outrage about anything – even without knowing the full facts.

But you all knew that anyway!

With Sony's recent reputation, this all does seem a bit odd, though. Makes you wonder exactly who's making the decisions at the top these days...