Best Game Reviews

1. » Review Dungeon Siege II

2008-09-02T21:24:00.002-07:00

It’s been a generation since you vanquished the evil that plagued the Land of Ehb, and now…a new menace has awakened. In Dungeon Siege II, the sequel to the best-selling RPG from Gas Powered Games, you will be called on to again wield sword and spell to save the world from a growing abomination many years in the making. A thousand years ago, the crusaders of Azunai crossed swords with the legions of Zaramoth in the final battle of a century-long rebellion.

As the tyrannical god Zaramoth struck the final blow through Azunai’s trembling shield, the earth shook. In that moment, the forces of magic were unchained, and both armies were consumed in a brilliant cataclysm that stretched for leagues across the Plain of Tears. Only a scarred wasteland remained as final testament to the First Age of Man.

And for a millennium, magic has continued to spread to the farthest corners of the world, freely flowing to any who would command it. But the tide of magic has begun to wane, heeding instead the call of an ancient legacy. From the Plain of Tears a new heir beckons, and with each day his strength grows. Consuming those who submit, eradicating those who resist. With none to oppose his ascendance, the circle will be complete, and an ancient age will begin anew.

When Dungeon Siege came out in early 2002, it was praised for having amazing graphics and a fast-paced, accessible combat system. However, for a role-playing game it was a bit shallow in terms of character development and story. Also, the game lacked the challenge to appeal to veterans of the point-and-click dungeon crawler. Developer Gas Powered Games took the criticism to heart, and set out to fine-tune the gameplay, as well as make the game a bit more challenging and involved for experienced players. The result is Dungeon Siege II, a solid effort that manages to improve on the first game to deliver a lengthy, combat-heavy dungeon hack that will certainly please fans of the genre.
Dungeon Siege II is all about killing hordes of evil monsters and collecting tons of loot.
Dungeon Siege II plays pretty much like your average action RPG, except instead of controlling a single character, you control a party of up to six characters. Don't get too excited though, as it takes a lot of work to get six characters in your party. You start the game with the ability to create a two-person party, but you can buy extra "slots" from an innkeeper to increase the size of your group. On your first run through the game, you can have a maximum of four characters in battle at a time. By the time you start on your third run through the story, you're finally able to get that sixth party member. It's a bit of a chore, though, since the story takes between 40 and 60 hours to complete. There are only a handful of characters in the game that you can recruit to join your party, but you can also purchase pets in any of the three major towns. The pets can be fed items to increase their maturity and to make them stronger. There are more than half a dozen different kinds of pets, including pack mules, lap dragons, and elementals. They aren't as immediately effective as human characters, but pets can be useful as a kind of living garbage disposal, since they'll gladly eat any extra items you might have.
Once you have your party assembled, you're ready for combat.

You only directly control one character at a time, but you can give your party orders with a quick press of a button. For example, you can tap the F key to put your party into mirror mode, which will make them mimic your main character. Or, you can put your party into rampage mode and they'll kill anything that moves. It's easy to switch characters on the fly as well. You can hit the F2 key to take control of your mage and fire off a quick healing spell, or you can press F3 to switch to your fighter and go pound on some enemies for awhile. You can also set magic spells to auto-cast, which can be handy. It's easy to set up the artificial intelligence-controlled characters to be self-sufficient enough that you don't have to do anything but tell them where to go. In fact, if you have healing spells set to auto-cast, your mages can easily heal your party faster than enemies can inflict damage, so the only thing you have to do to stay alive is keep your mages' mana up.
Unlike the first game in the series, Dungeon Siege II gives you complete control over how the characters in your party develop by letting you allocate skill points to make your characters more specialized. There are four classes in the game: ranger, fighter, combat mage, and nature mage. You choose your class by simply using the character in a certain way.

A character that uses primarily physical attacks will level up in melee skill and will effectively become a fighter. Any character can learn the skills of any class, but if you try to make a jack-of-all-trades-type of character, it'll end up being fairly weak and useless. It's best to choose a class early on and spend all of your skill points on the skills that pertain to that specific class. The skill tree for each class contains 12 different skills, but some of the more-advanced skills require you to reach a certain level with some of the more basic ones first.

For example, if you want to learn the deadly strike skill--which increases the damage of a critical hit--you have to have a level-36 melee skill and a level-one critical strike skill. The skills system does help to make the character development feel more dynamic than in the first Dungeon Siege game, but some of the skills are fairly useless, so you're better off just focusing on a few of the more-versatile ones.
The combat is simple and easy, but it's satisfying for awhile.
In addition to skills, you can now learn special powers based on how you decide to develop your characters. A fighter can learn the brutal attack power, which, when activated will make his or her next strike about 20 times more powerful than a regular attack. These special powers are set to the 1 through 4 keys, so it's easy to activate any of your characters' powers in the midst of combat. You'll be using these powers often, because they're extremely powerful and will let you take out a group of half a dozen enemies in a single blow. The only penalty for using these powers is that once used, you can't use the power again until it recharges, but that usually takes less than a minute.
Combat in Dungeon Siege II is about as simple as they come, but it can be pretty satisfying for awhile. You simply right-click on an enemy you want to attack, and if you hold the button you'll keep attacking the enemy until it dies. If you take too much damage, you'll get knocked unconscious, but as long as one of your characters is still coherent you can continue fighting. Eventually an unconscious character will wake up and be ready to fight again. However, if a character takes too much damage while unconscious, he or she will die.

publisher:

Microsoft

License:

Free Trial Version

2. » Review Delaware St. John Volume 1

2008-09-02T21:24:00.001-07:00

Delaware St. John Volume 1: The Curse of Midnight Manor

Delaware St. John is a young man with a gift for seeing the extraordinary. His adventure, this time, leads him to the decrepit remains of an abandoned building, nicknamed Midnight Manor.

Eerie voices call to Delaware for help to right the wrongs of their past. What he finds here is a mystery that has gone unsolved for almost one hundred years.

Delaware is not alone in the rotting building. A sinister force is at work to keep him from figuring out the secret of The Curse of Midnight Manor.

Gameplay Features:
● VIC (Voice/Imagery Communicator) - A modern PDA device for communicating with his assistant, Kelly. Delaware will use it to take pictures, record sounds and contact Kelly for clues.

● Mystery - Drawn to the long abandoned building, Delaware finds himself tangled up in a mystery that has gone unsolved for almost one hundred years!

● Think - A paranoid handyman and forces from beyond lay the groundwork for some crafty puzzles. Delaware will have to use his head if he's to get through the night.

● Survive - Something evil stalks Del. He must outrun, outsmart and outlast the evil beast that hunts him.

● A Psychic Lead - Delaware is the bearer of a psychic gift that allows him to see images of events that have happened in the past and events that will happen in the future. Decrypting these haunting visions will lead him to the truth behind The Curse of Midnight Manor.

Minimum System Requirements :

Windows 98/ME/XP/2000
Pentium 600 or better

256MB Memory

16x CD ROM

SVGA Graphics Card

DirectX 9

License:

Free Trial Version
Includes English and Spanish subtitles

publisher:

delawarestjohn

3. » Review Devastation Zone Troopers

2008-09-02T21:23:00.001-07:00

You are a DevastationZone Trooper, one of the Blue Star Alliance's toughest - hardened in combat and trained for action. During a space border patrol in the vicinity of planet Ardanis, you receive a code red distress call. The Rakkai Empire is invading the planet. A massive invasion overwhelms Ardanis, leaving chaos, horror and uncertainty in its wake. As one of only a few highly skilled survivors, you must use overwhelming firepower and all of your combat skills to battle the hordes of hostile ground troops, find out how to stop their plans and prevent the construction of a Space Warp Portal.

Features:

Destructible 3D game environment.
Incredible number of enemies on the screen.
Proprietary BladeFX 2.0 engine for extreme particle counts and advanced FX.
Advanced lighting engine (every bullet and explosion casts glow and light)
3D positional sound.
More than 50 levels of intense action.
Upgradable weapons and power-ups.
Unique levels with different enemy tactics.
Joystick and gamepad support.

System Requirements

Minimum:
Windows 2000/XP
1 GHz Processor
256 MB System RAM
80 MB Available Hard Disk Space
64 MB 3D Video Card (GeForce 3 / Radeon 9600 or better)
100% DirectX 9.0c (OpenAL) Compatible Sound Card
DirectX 9.0c or later

Recommended:
Pentium 4 or Athlon XP Processor
384 MB System RAM
128 MB 3D Video Card (GeForce 4 / Radeon 9800 or better)

Publisher :

CGS Software

License:

Free Trial Version

Screens:

4. » Review Astro Fury

2008-09-02T21:22:00.001-07:00

Featuring hot arcade action and teeth-rattling audio, Astro Fury pits you against a veritable onslaught of alien invaders. Your only defense: a single ship armed with plasma bursts and a stash of wicked secondary weapons. The creators of Magic Ball 2 have put their talents to good use in Astro Fury, creating some of the most jaw-dropping enemy attacks and memorable deep space backdrops ever seen in an arcade shooter. Can you save the galaxy once again? Download Astro Fury today and strap in for the fight of your life!

Full version features
100 levels to beat
40 enemies to obliterate
16 different bonuses to use
18 upgrades for primary weapon
11 explosive secondary weapons
Free upgrades to new versions
Free technical support

5. » Review Alien Shooter 2 + add on for original game

2008-09-02T21:20:00.000-07:00

Alien Shooter 2 - is a large-scale sequel to the first part of Alien Shooter. This is the unique alloy of arcade action and RPG elements which combines well-established world of classical games and unmatched dynamics of the first part.
The player will find well-built plot line with several ways to pass, many additional quests, ability to choose and upgrade the character.

The most impressive technical innovations are:
- dynamic shadows and lighting;
- about 10 000 monsters on each map, showing up to 100 monsters simultaneously on one playing screen;
- natural phenomena (fog, rain, water);
- NPC characters;

You will also find:
- more than 50 types of weapons - now you can not just kill but also burn, freeze and even diminish the enemies;
- more than 20 types of useful gadgets - from flash lights, radars and medkits to battle drones;
- 3 game modes: Campaign, Survive and Network game;
And, to crown it all, dynamic music and sound effects.

Alien Shooter
The endless darkness and the somber, long passages of a military complex have become the abode of evil, as thousands of blood-thirsty creatures fill its offices, storehouses and mysterious laboratories.

Your mission is simple: clear the base at all costs. You will be provided with explosives to help you gain access to the teleports from where thousands of pitiless creatures pour. A stationary gun will aid in the defense of the area. You have been granted access to the most advanced weapons technology money can buy. As you earn your pay, you can equip yourself with additional weapons in the arming area and biomechanical implants that will make your fighting abilities super human.

The alien invasion has begun, we have one chance, and that is to stop them cold in their staging area. Do not allow them escape this facility, you are our last hope. The fate of humanity now depends on you!

The Experiment (addon for original game) Can people tame the monsters?
The answer is in the new part of the Alien Shooter game!
Day after day, the hope for human survival is fading. Half of the Earth surface is inhabited by the monsters.
Now people have to dwell in specially made fortified settlements. Here they live, work, study, grow children and...
invent new ways to fight the aliens...

Now the leading scientists of Earth are working on creation of the new monster species, which should stop the invasion! Will the scientists succeed? Can their plans be realized, or this can cause even a larger disaster?

In the new part, you will find:

- 5 new missions
- new music tracks
- new type of monsters
- monster boss
- new objects

Also, after numerous customer requests, we have added ability to choose difficulty level. Now, after installng this add-on, you can select difficulty to match your skills.

Minimum System Requirements : Pentium II 400 MHz processor
Direct3D compatible 3D graphics card with 16 MB
64 MB RAM
DirectSound compatible sound card
Mouse compatible device

Recommended System Requirements:

Pentium III 800 MHz processor
Direct3D compatible 3D graphics card with 32 MB
128 MB RAM
DirectSound compatible sound card
Mouse compatible device

Click on download button next to the game demo you wish to try, save it to a known location then open file to install.

ScreenShots:
1-15

License:
Free Trial Version

publisher:

6. » Review After The End

2008-09-02T21:19:00.001-07:00

Your patrol cruiser received mayday signal from a research base on a suburban planet "Rydon 7". The dropship directed to investigate the situation was hit and damaged, and you are the only survivor. Do you dare to go out of the ship and see what's outside?

Cut your way through locations filled with mutants in your attempt of getting replacement units for your dropship and discovering the source of the evil raging all over the planet.

Features:

--Hot action all across the planet: forests and wastelands, deep canyons and lava fields, abandoned research facilities and ancient temples, day and night.
--10 powerful weapons ranging from Shotgun to Sonic Cannon.
--6 secondary weapons and devices such as Spider mines or player-mounted Sentry machinegun.
--User-controlled vehicles and lots of special abilities.
--Player skills may be advanced through experience points earned when killing enemies.
--Three game modes to enrich your playing experience: go through the Campaign mode to discover the source of disaster, complete the whole Firing Range training cycle, test your skills in Survival mode.
--Player-friendly interface to change game options, store player progress data and more.
--Blood may be turned off.
--Detailed Top Players List for all game modes.
--Ability to post your score to After The End Worldwide Halls of Fame - Campaign, Firing range and Survival.

Minimum System Requirements :

Win98/ME/2000/XP

PII 800 Mhz Processor

256 Mb RAM

3D Video Card 32 Mb

DirectX 8.1

Screenshots:

1 , 2 , 3

License:

Free Trial Version

publisher:

kraisoft.com