Here lie my thoughts of me, regarding games, the community, the reviews and gamer sites and everything in between about the flashing lights and sounds we so love.
UK retailer GAME has today revealed the official box art for the Xbox 360, PS3 and PC versions of the upcoming Battlefield 3 Limited Edition Physical Warfare Pack.
This limited edition with the Physical Warfare pack has only been announced in the UK so far and is exclusive to GAME and Gamestation, however EA has revealed that the pack will be made available to other regions before the games release.
You can check out the box arts below. Here is an updated version of all the boxes.
If there's one question we get all the time on My IGN and Twitter, it's "I just picked up [insert modern video game machine]. What should I play?" That's why we made this list of the Top 100 Modern Video Games. If you just came out of the persistent vegetative state you've been in since just before the Xbox 360 ushered in the era of high definition, these are the games we think you should play from the six years that have made up the current console generation. And yes, we worked in the coolest PSP, DS and mobile games that came out during that timeframe, too.
Now, as you've just come out of this coma and probably have friends and family to catch up with, we want to maximize your time. A lot of rad franchises have multiple rad games, but we boiled those down to one installment to represent the series and let you see the most games possible. Similarly, if a game had an awesome expansion but it didn't redefine the experience, we just pushed the DLC into the consideration of the game itself.
It looks like the list will be coming today (Monday). I am not 100% sure what this video is trying to show us. It does nothing to show us the top 100 modern games. So, we will just have to sit and wait. As soon as the list is available, I'll post it.
*UPDATE*
From the looks of things, IGN is fucked up right now, or something isn't showing. I found the top 100, but the list is a little old. I am trying to find the most current edition. Right now it looks like all they have are list from August 2010. I will post the links and then update with a new post once I find the most current list.
Here's the top 100 broken down in four sections. (Remember these list were last updated August 2010)
Keep on reading and you will soon find the answer.
We've all seen the E3 demonstration of Battlefield 3 in action and it looks amazing, but some gamers have been wondering just how lifelike it really looks.
Well the people over at GamingBolt have decided to compare some screenshots from the demonstration and compare them to real life images.
According to a statement on the official website for Star Wars: Galaxies, the game's last day of operation will be December 15, 2011. The shutdown will include both the main game and its ancillary card-trading titles, according to Galaxies' operator, Sony Online Entertainment.
"The shutdown of SWG is a very difficult decision, but SOE and LucasArts have mutually agreed that the end of 2011 is the appropriate time to end the game," the companies said in a statement. "We are extremely grateful to all of the SWG fans. We have had the rare opportunity to host one of the most dedicated and passionate online gaming communities, and we truly appreciate the support we've received from each and every one of you over the course of the past eight years."
ArenaNet's sequel to Guild Wars is not simply a prettier version of the original. Gone is the heavy instancing of explorable combat areas. InGuild Wars 2, the quest zones are open and filled with players. You can jump. You can swim and fight underwater. You can wander and participate in public quests that pop up around zones, and if you're using the Engineer profession, you can use guns, turrets and flamethrowers. Skill collection factored heavily into the original Guild Wars experience. Gear had statistical bonuses, but wasn't as essential as armor in, say, World of Warcraft, where the proper gear is required for success. Leveling was deemphasized, and even though the level cap in Guild Wars 2 is 80, leveling isn't meant to be the main focus. It's more a gauge of progress, like watching an odometer tick up on a road trip. Instead, the prime motivation for playing was to collect skills.ArenaNetlikes to compare their way of doing things to be more like Magic: The Gathering than Dungeons & Dragons. Your skill set is your deck. Even after collecting what's best, you still need to learn how to use it all properly.
Guild Wars 2 Video Preview
The key to the skill system in the original was that every skill couldn't be active at once. You had to pick which worked best together. Guild Wars 2 builds on this concept. Predefined skill sets are tied to weapons. If an Engineer equips a two-handed rifle, then the same skills will always be active across one half of the skill bar. Assuming the skills are unlocked, you'll get an overcharge shot to knock back enemies, a net shot and a jump shot every time. Drop the rifle for a one-handed pistol and shield and a new skill set opens up. The locked skill set associated with each weapon functions as an equalizer. If you see a player using a particular weapon type, you know they have these base skills. For customization, there's the other half of the skill bar to play with.
For the Engineer, this means swapping out kits. There's a mine kit, a flamethrower kit, a grenade kit and more. When activated, the kits replace the five weapon skills with a unique set. So if you activate the grenade kit, you can toss out poison grenades, freezing grenades and fragmentation grenades for as long as it makes sense. When you're done, you can then quickly drop the kit skills and return to your basic pistol or rifle set. The same goes for the flamethrower, letting you blast out fiery jets to singe multiple targets or set up a firewall along the ground to do damage over time to any immobile opponents.
These kits eat up one slot each, and can be swapped in and out at will until a fight begins, at which point you're locked into your choices. Kits aren't the only way to customize the Engineer's combat experience, though. Gun and thumper turrets are there too, which can be set down in a fight to automatically damage foes and also draw their attention. Since each profession isn't meant to be locked into specific roles, Engineers get heals as well. Some I saw included a basic self-heal as well as a healing turret, and ArenaNet there'll be plenty more to unlock throughout your journey.
If you duck underwater to fight fish and other aquatic beasts, there's yet another skill bar. Engineers can lob mines into the water that detonate after a set period of time, or fling out fishing nets to trap advancing targets, then follow up with a few torpedo shots. ArenaNet doesn't want the underwater combat to be a copy and paste of the land combat, only slower and more awkward. You won't use the same weapons as on land, there's no breath meter; instead you're armed with a spear gun and use skills that take advantage of the extra movement axis.
Lion's Arch Trailer
Swapping between active skill sets is even more important in dungeons, where the level of challenge is cranked up. Guild Wars 2's dungeons will be playable in different modes. First, there's a story mode that funnels you through groups of enemies and bosses, framing the encounters with dialogue and cut-scenes to give it context. After that's done, you're free to return to the dungeon and run it again and again, with successive runs featuring different enemies, bosses and pathways than there were in the story mode.
From what I played, (an early dungeon in story mode), the encounters seem well designed, requiring frequent shifting of skill sets. My group consisted almost entirely of Engineers and we were still able to plough through after a few embarrassing wipes. Enemies would sometimes trigger area of effect attacks and we'd have to roll out of the way. We had to get used to the idea of setting up a mixture of healing and offensive turrets. We had to revive each other in the field, simply by holding a key down near a corpse. Even though there wasn't a true tank, we gradually sank into specific roles: the flamethrower Engineer, the rifle Engineer, the Engineer that drops health packs, the one that goes crazy with mines. Then if bosses did something like spawn hordes of trash mobs to distract us, we could all flip over to flamethrowers to burn them into oblivion before switching back to preferred weapons or kit skill sets.
Outside of the dungeons, questing is meant to be bring people together instead of force you to treat everyone else as a competitor. Inflict a basic threshold of damage upon an enemy and you'll get credit for the kill and share in the loot. Wander into a public questing area and you'll get wrapped up in the task with others, be it destroying a flailing ice worm or destroying a mining tower while enemies scamper from a nearby cave to shoot at you and try to repair it. The cleanly presented map tracks your movement in a zone and makes it easy to identify places of importance. Teleporting between waypoints makes getting around the zone quick and easy. It should be simple enough for any MMO player to pick up, but there's clearly a lot of depth to the customization, especially when you start to consider the tweaks that can be made through the game's trait system, which can further modify nearly everything about your profession.
A Thief With Guns
That Guild Wars 2 is a beautiful game certainly doesn't hurt its appeal. The forested starting area for the Norn race features natural-looking, uneven terrain with trees jutting up into a veil of fog that runs up the foothills of the surrounding snow-capped mountain range. There's also a lot of attention being given to animation and presentation. The Charr race bounds across terrain on all fours. Using an Engineer's rocket boots sends you flying helplessly, uncontrollably backwards, away from a fight, and enemy combat animation are fun to watch. Hopefully the hardware requirements wind up being reasonable so it won't be too hard on your system to see all the effects and detail. ArenaNet says it's committed to making sure the game runs well on mid-range PCs. Ideally that holds true.
Based on what I played, taking into considering the combat, customization options and visuals, I have little doubt that Guild Wars 2 is one of the most promising MMOs in development. Someday ArenaNet might announce a specific release date, but for now the studio maintains it'll be done when it's done.
A Charr warrior admits to a history of violence. I love how each race will have a story. ANET is really taking this game forward. Unlike a lot of others. I am 100% sure this game will be a heavy hitter when it comes out. I love ANET and their games. Even the books are good! :p
Yes, there's underwater combat. ANET was saying there's no "breath meter" because we breath in real life, so why should it be "real" in a game. So when you jump into the water, you equip a SCUBA mask of sort. If you take damage and you reach zero life, that is when you start to drown. You just swim back to the top, regain your breath/life and away you go.
It also looks like each class will have their own type of underwater weapons. Looks very interesting.
As they say, imitation is the purest form of flattery, and the Samsung has drawn much of its inspiration for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 from its biggest competitors. Combining the impressive specs and features of the Motorola Xoom and the sleek and slim form factor of the Apple iPad 2, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1offers a solid balance between form and function, and at a competitive price. Though certainly not without its flaws, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 has the potential to be one of more successful Android tablets.
Unlike other Android tablets, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 strikes a great balance between stylish industrial design and technological prowess. At just 8.6mms thin, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 takes on and surpasses the iPad 2's ultra-slim design, which measures at 8.8mms. Additionally, the overall weight of the unit is roughly 1.25 pounds; also just shy of the iPad 2's 1.33 pound design. While the size and weight differences between the iPad 2 and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 are difficult to discern, they do make the Galaxy Tab 10.1 stand out against other Android tablets, which generally feature bulkier, more simplified designs. In terms of aesthetics, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 features tri-tone plastic casing, with black framing along the screen, silver trim on the edges, and either a black or white back panel. Though the aluminum unibody casing used in the iPad 2 looks and feels better, the Galaxy Tab 10.1's plastic body looks decent and ultimately allowed Samsung to reduce the overall weight.
Like most Android tablets, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 sports a widescreen aspect ratio display, which has a 1280x800 resolution WXGA TFT screen. While the Galaxy Tab 10.1 struggles at wider viewing angles, it has great color representation and displays incredible amount of detail.
Under the hood, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is powered by a dual-core 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor, the same found in the Motorola Xoom, which allows it to tackle multitasking with ease and run large, complex apps to run smoothly. Menu navigation is also responsive and app loads are almost instantaneous.
The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is running Android 3.1, the latest version of Google's tablet-specific mobile OS, which is near-identical to the one found on the Motorola Xoom. Compared to the original Galaxy Tab, which ran on a tweaked version of Google's smartphone Android OS, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is a far more intuitive and fluid user experience.
Unfortunately, however, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 suffers from the fact that the range of tablet-specific apps on the Android Marketplace is still extremely limited. Though it is steadily expanding, there are a lack of exceptional exclusive apps. In fact, most of the most popular apps are those which can also be found on iOS, like Pulse, Facebook, Twitter, Angry Birds, etc. While some are identical to the iOS version, others have a clunkier, less intuitive interface.
But the Galaxy Tab 10.1 also has some issues in terms of hardware. Though it rivals the Motorola Xoom and other competing tablets with many of its components, it lacks some common features, like support for expandable SD storage and direct HDMI output. Fortunately, Samsung has addressed the need for HDMI output with an optional adapter, the inability to expand upon the 16GB or 32GBs built-in storage on the Galaxy Tab 10.1 could be problematic for users in need of additional space. Of course, the iPad also lacks expandable memory, but it also has the benefit of data and media management via iTunes, allowing users to quickly and efficiently remove and replace data.
Then, of course, there are the built-in front- and rear-facing cameras, which are the 2-megapixels and 3-megapixels, respectively. The quality of the cameras is better than the iPad 2, which is not exactly a difficult feat, but they are still inferior to smartphones and point-and-shoot cameras.
The most compelling aspect of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is its price, which is intended to compete with the iPad 2, at $499.99 for the 16GB Wi-Fi-only model. There is also a 32GB variation, which costs $599.99. Unfortunately, unlike the iPad 2, there isn't a 64GB variation, which when paired with the fact that there is no SD card expansion, is somewhat limiting. Pricing for 3G-enabled versions has also not been announced.
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