Trine

I picked this game up on a whim as part of the July steam sale.  I think it only cost me a few English pounds and it was money well spent.

If you ever played Lost Vikings on the Amiga then you will immediately know what type of game Trine is.  If you didn’t play LV then just for you, Trine is a problem solving platform-er.  A platform-er with physics.  Everything in this game can effect everything else.

There is a back story which is explained with videos and narrative at the start of the game.  This ends up with you playing as 3 people at the same time and you can switch between them at will (as long as they are not dead).  A wizard, A Thief and A Knight.  Each class has strengths, weaknesses and a specific set of skills.  This skill set increases as you progress through the game, but then the puzzles also get harder.

Each of the classes starts the game with 2 skills.
The Wizard gets a levitate object skill and the ability to conjure boxes out of thin air.  You conjure the box by using mouse gestures.  The bigger the box you draw, the more mana it uses and the bigger box is conjured. Thus cube does follow the rules of gravity and physics. Conjure it in the air and it will drop. On an incline and it will slide etc.

The Knight gets a defend and and aggressive skill.  So far I pretty much only use the knight to bash my way through the undead minions that hamper my progress.   The next skill he gets allows you to pick up small objects and launch them.  Below you can see this in action, and also a small demonstration of the physics as the cube presses against the Knight.

The knight tries his new skill...

The Thief starts out with the ability to fire arrows and a grappling hook, that only attaches to certain scenery types.

The separate classes can die, but its not “game over” until all three are dead.  If you can make it to the next check point, the dead members of your party will revive.

The first mini "boss".

The audio is in one word “awesome”.  There is an acoustic soundtrack of multiple songs that plays throughout.  This is complemented by background scenery noises (such as dripping water, water falls, fire).  Add to this the enemy noises and the random voice overs and its a joy to listen to.  The wizard is an English sounding playboy, always  trying to chat up the thief.  The thief is witty and sultry, in contrast to the stupid and blunt Knight.

Here is a selection of screens of me playing the game.  You can see how I overcame the obstacle of making the long jump and avoiding the wall of spikes.

hmmm, what to do?	conjure a cube	drop the ledge
jump up	to next section

Trine does support multiple players on the same PC (up to 3, 1 for each class).  With more players you loose the ability to switch between the classes, they are always active instead.  I think this may make the puzzles even harder as when its a timed puzzle, or a physics based balancing act it will be more difficult.

For me Trine lacks only 1 thing.  Internet multi player.  It would be perfect for filling an hour or so 2-3 times a week with some chums.

If your interested in seeing it in action then here are two videos that should give you a good idea.

Also PRO-TIP:  You can kill the skeletons by dropping stuff on them(cubes), including yourself(Knight).

Well, Europe’s summer is here bringing with it the sun and scantily clad people enjoying it …

With the yin must come the yang, someone has to balance the universe.

So for the betterment of all mankind WOW players all over the world join forces , closeted up in rooms, forsaking food, toilet breaks and personal hygiene in order to kill more mangy wolves and find the coveted sword of 1000 truths.

It not yet time for the open beta, its expected soon (TM), but with the lifting of the NDA all sorts of new features, screens and videos become available.  Im hoping for the intro video soon as blizzard definately deliver when it comes to cinematics.

Blizzard have put more effort into this expansion than each of the previous ones and has aimed to change the focus of the game to be even more “casual friendly”.  Gone are the times when you should feel pressurized into spending 4-5 hours a night in order to progress and have fun.  You will hopefully be able to play at your own speed and with a little effort find other players to aid you on your adventures.

There is target content for everyone whether your hardcore or casual, a new player, a long time absent returning player or someone who never really left.  The Cataclysm has affected all the existing content.
The existing 1-60 zones have all been redone from the ground up.  Quests, hubs, loot, scenery.   Those special areas familiar to players such as loch modan or the barrens have all changed.

The main part of WOW while leveling from zero is obviously questing and the new player experience has been enhanced in order to make this easier, quicker and more fun.
The quest tracker can be tailored to show quest levels so before setting out you can asses the
difficulty and decided whether you need help.

The map will show the approx target(s) of the quest.
With multiple quests in your log, you can utilise this new map feature to plan your route so there should be less back tracking.

The dungeon finder allows you to queue for instances while doing other things.  Once a group has been found by the system your automatically ported to the entrance and once complete you port back to your original position.  No more 3 hours trips to get to scarlet monastery as alliance.

With changes to the dungeon finder and its improved memory and AI you should find over time that if your a polite, friendly and good player that’s who you get grouped with and all the rude tards just get left behind.

Playing in groups is a big part of wow and blizzard hope to enforce this will the introduction of
guild XP and guild achievements.  Benefits such as 5% XP boost, 5% honour boost or a group resurrection spell will all be added through the enhanced guild system.

If all the above doesn’t wet your appetite then there arealso 2 new playable races.
For the alliance a group of worgen will become playable.  These are cursed humans who with the
appropriate experience will be able to switch between the human and werewolf form at will.  Hailing from Gilneas behind the Greymane wall.  (That big grey wall that’s always existed in the SW of Silverpine forest).

The horde get to play as goblins, coming from the lost isles.

Both the new starting areas take there inspiration from the Death Knight experience introduced with WOTLK.

Players choosing to play as worgen or goblin will find themselves immersed in story and having an
impact on how the arcs progress.

There are 5 new zones for people leveling from 80 to 85 with new dungeons, new raids and over 3000 new quests.  A note here for existing player is that your 80 heirloom items will not work for 80-85.

Well this was intended to be a taster and not an exhaustive summary.  There is much more to the expansion such as new talents, professions, and entire graphics engine overhaul and much more.

The most recent patch to the live servers also introduced new Real ID chat system which should help players join up with there friends.  All we need now is cross realm instances and raids.

This player for one expects to return to azeroth.  Im looking forward to choosing a new char and leveling all over again, at my own pace exploring lots more than I did the first time and fleshing out my char with a plethora of proffesions.  I expect “endgame” will still be fun but I am hoping it takes me a long time to get there.

As usual see MMO Champion for the most up to date wow news, screenshots and videos.

Also the Blizzard Cataclysm page has lots of new info and a catclysm anouncement video.

Check out the new update for BFBC2, available now. If you bought the game through Steam it should auto-update. If not, run the BFBC2Updater in Program Files\Electronic Arts\Battlefield Bad Company 2.

Updates to Battlefield: Bad Company 2 have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted.

All game servers will need to be taken down for updates. The maintenance period starts on Wednesday Jun 30th at 07:00AM (GMT+2). Most of them should be back up by 11:00AM (GMT+2).

Changelog:

Server – Some potential sources for lag/rubberbanding have been eliminated
Server – The old reserved slots has been replaced by a kick-on-demand system like in BF2
Server – Log file for server admins: all remote admin interface commands/events are logged
Server – Log file for server admins: major server events + all chat messages are logged
Server – Idle kick is controllable
Server – Profanity filter can be disabled
Server – Teamkill-kick system is controllable
Server – Ticket counts and bleed rate are controllable per-level
Server – Infantry only mode available per-level
Server – Initial spawn delay and respawn delay are adjustable
Server – Server description can be up to 400 characters, and use “|” for line breaks
Server – Banlist can contain up to 10.000 entries
Server – reduced latency in packet handling

Admin Interface – fixed the player.onKill spam that occasionally happened
Admin Interface – ensured that player.onJoin events always report the player name
Admin Interface – events triggered when people spawn
Admin Interface – much more info on kills
Admin Interface – detailed stats are reported at end-of-round

Gameplay – Various minor level bugfixes
Gameplay – Helicopter handling has been tweaked
Gameplay – Weapon tweaks have been implemented based on PC public feedback
Gameplay – Tracer dart gun speed has been changed from 300 m/s to 200 m/s
Gameplay – Fixed technical hang when a crate was armed outside of the combat area
Gameplay – “Victory is near” message was shown for the wrong team on Valparaiso, this has been fixed
Gameplay – Countermeasures can be fired when driving a helicopter
Gameplay – The brightness of the pilot view in the Russian helicopter has been reduced
Gameplay – Advanced Spotting scope works better
Gameplay – Knifing people in the back works again (we backed out the change that we had done for Server R11)
Gameplay – Hit box for moving targets expands based on the speed of the targets movement
Gameplay – G36 now has crosshair when in Hardcore mode

Server Browser – Servers are sorted into 3 categories: Normal, Modified, Hardcore depending on their settings
Server Browser – Added support for retrieving update progress
Server Browser – Now refreshes information
Server Browser – Join queue system when attempting to join a full server
Server Browser – All settings are automatically saved between sessions
Server Browser – Pings are sent via an alternate mechanism, which should work for non-Administrator users as well

Client – Fixed DX9 issue, which likely caused graphics glitches and perhaps crashes
Client – Fixed some crashes
Client – Toggle/hold crouch is user controllable
Client – Toggle/hold zoom is user controllable
Client – Vsync bugfixed for DX10/DX11
Client – Rewritten how settings are written to disk; this should reduce/eliminate the spawn lag
Client – Fixed bug where a player could join a server before the stats has been downloaded causing faulty stats in “EOR- unlock progression”-screen
Client – New chat system allows chatting when dead (but not during end of round) and keeps a 100 lines log
Client – Improved Play Now functionality
Client – Removed K/D ratio and Skill Level filters in the leaderboards
Client – Any points you get while being dead will be added to your score
Client – Reduced negative mouse acceleration
Client – Increased health on the Cobra to match other vehicles
Client – More informative disconnection/kick reasons
Client – Support for Map Packs so PC gets future VIP maps at the same time as consoles

The Balance tweaks are as followed:
Slightly increased the damage of the UZI at long range.
The AKs74u now has more felt recoil when aiming.
The G3, VSS, and all SemiAutomatic rifles now settle slightly faster between shots when aiming.
The PKM, Type 88LMG, G3, An94, and 40mm shotgun have returned to their former glory.
Increased the damage of the MG3 to bring it in line with the rest of the LMGs.
Fixed a bug where the Saiga12 with slugs would do too much damage at long range.
Fixed a bug where the SVU would do too little damage at long range.
Fixed a bug where M95 rounds would not kill armored targets with headshots.

Source: Steam News

Paths To A Kingdom is the 7th instalment to a long running and much loved (in certain circles) series.
Starting out with “The Settlers” on the Amiga, back in the good old days the series has progressed and improved with each new game.

At its heart the game is a traditional settlers game.  You start with  a small amount of resources, settlers, knights and buildings.  As you progress you become more powerful and can choose to expand you empire.  The difference in this game is that this doesn’t have to be to the detriment of your enemies.  It will quickly become apparent that your playing a map.  That map may have other human players or NPC AI, but ultimately your playing the map.

Victory Points are a brand new game feature.  You win the map by gaining a number of victory points.  These are gained by performing tasks, completing quests and achieving status.

The sub title “Paths To A Kingdom” is where the game moves out of its usual comfort zone and in my opinion looses some of its appeal.  Among the different paths are religion, trade, banking etc…  and as in life its much easier to buy your way to victory rather than work for it the hard way.

Maps.
Each map is split into several zones.  Each of these zones will most likely have a military presence that needs to be overcome in order to conquer the zone, you may need to over come fortifications prior to engaging in melee.  You can only attack zones that border your existing zones and are connected by a road.  If fighting is not your preferred method of attack you could try sending in the clerics to pacify resistance or just bribing the standing army.  The latter two options are not always available.
Some of the zones will be occupied by roving bandit gangs and are easily over come, other zones will be occupied by one of your enemies and some of the zones will be special sectors, with quests for you to complete.
Each of the zones will also be of a different style.  It may be arable farming land with woods or cliffs ripe for mining etc.  You need to take this into account when expanding.

A battle about to start

Single Player.
The single player campaign uses a combination of all the games features.  Its basically a series of increasing complexity maps, with tailored AI.  Sometimes you win a map by achieving a specific set goal.  Sometimes its a set number of victory points.  Any Settlers veteran shouldn’t find it too hard to complete the single player campaign on the default difficulty.

Zoomed in view of settler in action.

Graphics and Sound.
This is one area where the game really does shine.  The graphics retain the cartoon style of the series but have been improved loads over the previous games.  The cinematics are top quality and the soundtrack is top notch.  With both the in game sounds and the soundtrack taking advantage of multi speaker systems.

A game in progress.

Negatives.

The game does have some really bad points in my opinion.

First and foremost is the stupid save game system.  IN an effort to implement a DRM system.  You have to be online to pay the game at all, even just the single player campaign.  All your save games are synced to the UBISoft cloud servers.  This means that every 10 mins or so the entire game lags while it performs an auto save, if your lucky that is.  If your not lucky then you couldn’t even start the game due to the UBISoft servers being offline.  Which happens ALOT of the time.

Secondly the Victory Points system favours the pacifist turtle.  Settlers games and RTS’s in general are mostly about building your empire and crushing your enemies.   The Settlers 7 Victory Point system  favours the passive acts early in the game.  Your generally too far away from your main enemy to have effect on them in combat.  In fact once you expanded by 2-3 zones you may as well just sit tight and wait for them.  The trade, research, religion and banker etc.. VPs are easy to get and you will most likely have won the map before engaging the main enemy.

For me the game quickly became a rush to produce a church and strat researching, a sheep farm and start selling clothes.  Then you just buy everything you need.  Even in multiplayer the games going to be alomst over by the time your standing toe to toe with your enemy.

I’m going to give a final review score of 5/10.  The game is good fun for a single play through.  I wouldn’t recommend it for repetitive play on either the skirmish maps or multiplayer.  If you know someone who has it, pop round for a cuppa, some cake and a 2-3 hours session. That’s all you will ever need.  I wouldn’t recommend to anyone to buy it due to the DRM.

The submissions phase of the logo contest has ended. Get ready to vote as voting is only open for two weeks. Go here to place your vote in the forums.

That’s right, today marks TO’s 7th year in existence!  We’d like to thank all Total Oblivion members, former and current, for their dedication and for sticking with us through the thick and thin of it all, for these many years! We’ve come a long way from a small armoured outfit in Planetside and, fingers crossed, we hope we have many more years of gaming to come!

Happy Birthday Total Oblivion!

Yes, its that time of year again. The release of the next expansion in the wow universe gets closer and closer.

Today marks the end of the closed “press only” beta. Speculation is high that an open beta will be available soon. Blizzard have marked the occasion by releasing a tonne of information about the new content.

Vashj’ir: Surviving the Depths
Its time for all your “SSC was merely a setback” jokes as the Naga return. In a surprising turn of events one of the new starter zones (78-82) will be mostly underwater. Blizzard have already said that the graphics and physics engine will be getting a major overhaul for cataclysm and looking at these screens and knowing they are under water you can see the new stuff in action. Multiple quests hubs, Naval Ships and Submarines. A new way of traveling underwater and new combat mechanics plus 2 dungeons at launch.

Mount Hyjal: In Defense of Nordrassil
“Molten Core was merely a setback” hehe !! as Ragnaros and his fiery buddies descend on Mount Hyjal and the World Tree. The other starter zone, also (78-82). Will be based in a revised Mount Hyjal zone. With phased content, restricted access and mini portals. This zone should feed your leveling and lore needs.

As usual if you want further info, or to see how the news has been received.
The best place to look is MMO Champion.
Here you can also see a “starter” preview of most of the class/skill/talent changes affecting all the classes.

So far the only negative point I can see about this news is the death of further existing content.  Its already possible to DING 80 without going to Stormpeaks, Icecrown or Zuldrak.  Most leveling players currently still do these zone as a source of lore, quests and gold but what reason will there be to visit them if you can hit northrend at 68.  Do the tundra, fjord, hills and wastes and then go straight into Cataclysm content.  Bypassing much of Northrend in the same way people skip most of Outlands today.

Gears of War 3

Though expected, Epic have officially announced Gears Of War 3 and released a trailer to show it off.

Gears of War 3 Trailer

From the looks of things in the trailer Dom is still recovering since his wife’s death in GOW2 and has a beard to show for it. Also it looks like Anya has put down the radio and picked up a gun to help in the fight, hopefully she isn’t going to be this games Carmine. Though it is a guess, it looks like the Locust and Humans will be teaming up to fight the Lambent from GOW2.

Dead Rising 2 Multiplayer

Due for release later this year Capcom announced that DR2 would be getting a Multiplayer mode, no-one was sure what it entailed. Now it has been announced the Multiplayer would be party based with teams and solo players competing against each other in party games involving killing Zombies many different ways.

Dead Rising 2 MP Trailer

More News on Nintendo 3DS

After some digging around the Internet I was able to find some more information regarding Nintendo’s new handheld console, ahead of this years E3. It would seem that it will contain the previously mentioned motion tracking camera, this could mean that if it follows the DSi road, it will have two cameras. It has been revealed that the 3DS will be the next generation of handheld console, with the iPhone beginning to be a viable gaming platform, Nintendo look to be reassuring the world, they are the best at portable gaming. Nvidia have been linked with the graphics and 3D aspect of the handheld, which should prove interesting as Nvidia have already proven themselves in the 3D market with their PC Graphics Cards. Also it is rumoured that SDK’s have been sent to various developers including the company behind the Pokemon games. Whilst we will have to wait till E3 to full details, I would imagine the 3DS will be backwards compatible with the DS.

FPS XCOM

The XCOM series has always been popular with PC gamers for many years, but has sunk into the background of cult games in recent years. 2K Marin of Bioshock 2 fame have decided to reinvent the franchise with a FPS entry. Many people are already comparing it to the unpopular XCOM:Enforcer a Third person take on the XCOM universe. Christoph Hartman of 2K has said:

With BioShock 2, the team at 2K Marin proved themselves as masters of first-person, suspenseful storytelling, and with XCOM they will re-imagine and expand the rich lore of this revered franchise. Players will explore the world of XCOM from an immersive new perspective and experience first-hand the fear and tension of this gripping narrative ride.

Whilst no release date has been confirmed, the game will be released for the Xbox 360 and PC. Personally I loved the original games and I am curious to what the Bioshock 2 team can come up with to appeal to the fans and new gamers alike.

New 3D DS

In a strange move by Nintendo, they have annonced a 3D version of the popular handheld system, even the XL hasn’t even hit shelves yet. Satoru Iwata president of Nintendo says that the 5th version of the DS will not require any 3D glasses and will include sensors to track the users head movements to give the best 3D experience at any given time. Many people think that, Nintendo will reveal a working prototype in time for E3 this year. Whether or not this new DS will include the motion controls that were talked about previously, remains to be seen.

Mass Effect 2 DLC

Bioware have announced new DLC for Mass Effect 2 and will include a new member of Shepherds  crew called Kasumi and will include a new loyalty mission. She is a master thief and her mission will reflect this also included is a research upgrade and flashbang grenades. The DLC is scheduled for release on 6th April and unlike the ‘Firewalker DLC’ there will be a small charge around 560 Microsoft Points.

Xbox 360 USB Storage

After a much talked about update to the 360 last year, that disabled a lot of third-party memory units. Mircosoft is changing things once again, an upcoming firmware update looks to add third-party storage solutions once again, including the abilty to use more than 4GB to a limit of 16GB. This will allow people to save Gamer Profiles, Game Saves, and entire titles ripped from a disc to be stored on the mass storage devices, though it has been stated the ripped titles will still require the disc to be in the drive for verification purposes. This will be a very popular update for many 360 owners as the price per GB is terrible when compared against a normal PC hard drive or PS3 hard drive.

Slim Xbox 360?

It is rumoured via Kotaku that a Slim 360 will be heading to stores. Recent leaked photos of a new slimmer more compact motherboard for the 360, leads some to believe in a Slim version to follow Sony’s route of a smaller alternative. I will report more as I hear it.

Hello everyone. You may remember our old logo which used to be proudly displayed on our web site? If not it doesn’t matter ‘cus we’re about to get a new one. Who’s going to design this new logo you ask? You are!

What to do:

• Anyone can enter, you just have to sign up to the forum to submit a download link to you logo (or if you want it to remain private till the logos are judged you can PM a link to drax0r or Dash
• Logo can be any size or shape and can contain ‘to’, ‘total oblivion’, optionally you can also mention that the community was established in 2003
• Multiple versions can be submitted (e.g. with just the most basic elements and basic elements plus tag line etcetera)

Prize:

The creator of the winning design will win a game for the Wii console (don’t have a Wii? We’re sure you know someone who owns one who’d be happy to swap it with you for something).

You can expect your winning design to be used prominently on this web site and also in the following places:

• Desktop backgrounds
• In game avatars (i.e. Steam)
• In game sprays (Source)
• Stickers available at i-Series LANs
• Banner displayed at LAN events
• Anything else you can think of (suggestions welcome, please comment below).

Guidelines: Consider keeping the logo as simple and effective as possible with elements which may work when viewed as small as 16 pixels wide. Bear in mind that you don’t need to use any elements from the old logo such as the square brackets ‘[]‘. If the logo works in just one or two colours then we’ll be able to make it fit wherever we need to use it.

The best entry will be selected by us, and may be developed further before use in the places mentioned above.

Closing date is yet to be decided but could be any time so get those ideas in quick! We’ll keep you up to date on the competition here so stay tuned.

Good luck and have fun!

-Dash