With the near ubiquitous nature of broadband-enabled video game consoles, we've seen an increase in games that are intended primarily for online cooperative play. Games such as Left 4 Dead and the new Borderlands have basic single-player functionality, but are clearly intended for multiplayer sessions with friends.
The social utility of this type of cooperative gameplay is an especially important point of differentiation after a season of single-player hits, from Batman: Arkham Asylum to Uncharted 2.
Jeff, Scott, and Dan took the game for a spin to see if it's worth a spot on your holiday wish list.
Dan:
Mixing elements of pop-culture touchstones from Mad Max to Diablo, Borderlands stands out from the crowd with its graphics, done in a faux hand-drawn style vaguely reminiscent of French comic book artist Jean Giraud.
The razor-thin (even for a video game) plot about mercenaries on a semi-deserted planet searching for a treasure trove of alien artifacts is merely a deus ex machine to give players assignments to carry out -- usually involving a delivery boy style run through the badlands, killing bandits or hunting for a missing item. The handful of characters you meet are essentially cardboard standees, who act as vending machines to pick up new aissgnments, and to return to after to claim a reward.
In practice, the single-player game is a grim trek through the desert -- good if you're into endless shootouts, and fighting your way through the same stretch of road over and over again -- but it left us cold.
The real appeal is the up-to-four-player multiplayer version of the game -- which friends (and we guess strangers as well) can band together, much as one would in a massively multiplayer online game. The mechanic for linking up online is brilliantly integrated -- invite a friend who is also playing (something easy to see through the in-game friends list), and they can instantly beam into your version of the game world. Their personal games are automatically saved, and they pop up next to you with all their skills and equipment, can stay as long as they like.
Hooking up with others online instantly changed the game into a social event, with gunplay. By bringing in higher-level players, seemingly insurmountable enemies became easy to beat, and the game's mostly barren landscape now felt like it was teaming with activity.
Another key selling point is the semi-random nature of the weapons and equipment one finds -- they're mostly created on the fly by the game, allowing for nearly limitless variations. In practice, most of the guns look and feel the same, and you'll spend far too much time comparing stats and modifiers trying to figure out which gear to keep and which to ditch. Some may find this fun, we found it to be the video game equivalent of busy work.
The bottom line is that Borderlands works best when you and your friends all agree to get the game for the same console, and can work out your schedules to sync up for online play.
Scott:
Last year, Fallout 3 brought an incredible level of detail and world-building to a post-apocalyptic wasteland video game. Borderlands does not, but it's not trying to.
With a more ridiculous fun-loving Tarantino-like attitude, the game's gun battles and missions unfold with a sense of randomness--which is because a lot of the loot and weapons you collect are in fact generated randomly. That's the idea. Play for the ridiculous assortment of treasures, and for the anything-goes wild atmosphere.
Single-player gameplay felt thin and too full of do-this-do-that missions, but adding players for online co-op makes it more like Left 4 Dead, but with more story. The incredibly deep catalog of items and weapons reminded me of old PC games from the '80s and '90s, where you'd spend five hours questing for a better set of leg armor. But if you want a role playing game that's light on the RPG and heavy on the kick-butt, give it a try--especially if you like playing online.
Jeff:
Borderlands is an impressive hybrid, successfully combining role-playing and first-person-shooter elements. Come to think of it, it's surprising that these two don't join up more often in games. We saw this effort in Fallout 3, but the first-person-shooting mechanic in Borderlands is much more satisfying, while the story in Borderlands doesn't come close to that in Fallout. Looking past the mostly forgettable plot, the unique art style, and seemingly endless array of discoverable weapons, are the true stars here.
The game is set up on a mission-to-mission basis and for the most part, you'll have your hand held as to what you're supposed to accomplish. And while the single-player experience is mostly running around to the next mission start point, the online co-op definitely makes things a bit more interesting, but ultimately leaves you reliant on whether or not your friends own the game. Teaming up with online random players can be enjoyable, but it's not always ideal.
Your school of thought will ultimately decide whether or not Borderlands is a must-play. If you think online co-op should be just as engaging as a single player experience, then this is probably the title for you. However if you're like me, and you still look at co-op as an added bonus, you may want to give Borderlands a rent. That said, if you're open-minded, Borderlands may just be the title to change the way you think about online co-op.
Pretty much exactly as predicted, Blizzard Entertainment announced the next expansion for World of Warcraft Friday afternoon during the opening ceremonies for its annual Blizzcon convention in Anaheim, Calif.
(Credit:
Blizzard Entertainment)
Called Cataclysm, the next expansion will, among other features, raise the character level cap to 85, introduce two new playable character races, and involve a wholesale refresh of Azeroth, the setting for the original World of Warcraft game released back in 2004.
Specifics were hard to come by during the opening ceremony. As is customary, no release date or pricing for Cataclysm was mentioned. Blizzard did detail the new player races (goblins for the horde, the werewolf-like worgen for the alliance) and listed a few new race and class combinations that weren't allowed previously. And of course players can expect new dungeons of varying sizes to explore. You can read GameSpot's live blog of the official presentation, which includes more details about Cataclysm as well as Blizzard's forthcoming Diablo III. Blizzard will also be hosting numerous panel discussions as Blizzcon proceeds throughout the weekend, and we expect more information will emerge.
We'll let GameSpot do what they do best and handle the nitty-gritty details of Cataclysm, Diablo III, and Blizzard's other in-development game, Starcraft II as they're revealed, especially since, unlike us, they're actually at the event. We'll keep an eye on the big picture stuff, and report back accordingly.
This error page from the Blizzcon ticket store has been nicknamed "Failoc" by fans.
(Credit: Blizzard)As a big World of Warcraft fan, I was extremely excited that Blizzard was once again having its annual Blizzcon convention in Anaheim, Calif., this October. Blizzcon is a two-day event and celebration of all of Blizzard's properties, which include Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo. It typically contains Q&A panels, social events for players and developers, and hands-on gameplay of the latest Blizzard games. Think of it as a mini-E3 just for Blizzard fanatics.
So I woke up early Monday morning to purchase tickets for the show, which were set to go on sale August 11 via the Blizzard Store. The log-in page loaded like molasses, and when it finally loaded, I found out I had to create an account before I could buy tickets. Which I then tried to do, but it kept giving me errors and kept pushing me back to the first page. I finally gave up in frustration and left to go to the office.
It turns out, I wasn't the only one to suffer from Blizzcon ticket snafu. Comments from Wowinsider as well as Blizzard's General Discussion forums indicate that Blizzard had been suffering from ticket store problems all morning. Even after they took the store down for maintenance in the afternoon and placed it back up, site errors and traffic problems continued to plague the ticket store. The murloc on the Error Page has even gained a nickname, dubbed "Failoc", perhaps in reference to the Twitter "Fail Whale." From comments and forum posts, it seems like only a handful of people managed to buy tickets Monday.
... Read moreThe demise of the desktop PC has long been foretold. The prophets say laptops will one day rule the Earth, feeding off the carcasses of old ATX boxes, belching Iomega Zip drives as they go. The doom-mongers are probably right, but let's be clear: as great as laptops are, nothing beats a desktop machine for sheer value.
(Credit:
Wired2Fire)
Take, for example, the Wire2Fire Diablo Ultima. It's an exceptionally capable gaming PC, and it only costs 699 pounds Stirling. It uses an Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 overclocked to 3.2 gigahertz, a BFG 8800GT 512MB graphics card, 2GB of Corsair DDR2 PC6400 memory, a 250GB hard drive, a DVD rewriter and a 530-watt Hiper power supply unit. A laptop with a similar spec would require the ritual massacre of a whole herd of piggy banks.
The whole thing is encased in a CoolerMaster Centurion chassis, which offers decent cooling -- an important factor given the overclocked CPU. There's plenty of space to upgrade with extra drives and the Asus P5KC motherboard comes with a second PCI Express slot, so you can add a second graphics card if you're uber-l33t.
We're about to get elbow deep in the Diablo Ultimate, so you can expect a full review in the near future. In the meantime, you can have a look at it, and its equally hellacious relatives, at the Wired2Fire Web site.
(Source: Crave UK)
One of the biggest games you've never heard of is celebrating its 20th birthday this month. On July 28, 1987, Mike Stephenson released NetHack, a text-based RPG that would become one of the most influential open-source computer games ever coded. While the game itself wasn't new or unique, (it was based off of previous games like Rogue and Hack, that spawned the genre of "Roguelikes"), its development and license makes it an influential part of the annals of gaming history.
NetHack was one of the first games to adopt the open-source General Public License, a software license that lets any user download, distribute, or modify its code, as long as that code remains free and available. Because of this, NetHack has spawned dozens of variants and spin-offs. Amazingly, NetHack remains in development to this day, with Stephenson and his friends still working on it. The current version of NetHack, 3.4.3, was released in 2003, and a new version will be released "when it's ready."
NetHack and other Roguelikes will probably seem strange to most modern gamers. Before polygons and sprites, before bump mapping and pixel shading, before Kratos' scowl and Cloud's hair, we had letters, numbers, and symbols. While graphically enhanced versions are available, NetHack originally used (and still uses) ASCII characters to represent everything. Your character (@) and his pet dog (d) or cat (f) must brave the dark corridors (#) of a massive, randomly-generated dungeon and fight the kobolds (k), bats (B), and leprechauns (l) within to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor ("). These Roguelikes might look like a bunch of letters shuffling around a chalkboard, but it was a pretty darn clever way to put visual, dungeon-crawling action into older hardware. Best of all, if you can read this post, you can be almost certain that your computer (or PDA, or cell phone) can run NetHack.
Aspects of Rogue, Hack, and Nethack can still be found in modern games today, in almost every dungeon-crawling RPG out there. Diablo, the archetypical dungeon crawler, uses huge, randomly generated dungeons, hordes of monsters, and hoards of loot in almost the exact same way as NetHack and its kin.
It's more 'Diablo' than 'World of Warcraft,' but either way, it's free.
World of Warcraft might be the current king of MMOs, but it has one major flaw it simply can't overcome: you have to pay for it. It's $20 for the game, $40-50 for the expansion, and another $15 each month, which adds up to a pretty hefty price tag for your online gaming. Unfortunately, most MMOs go by this system: buy the game, pay more per month to keep playing.
Now you can get your massively multiplayer gaming for free with Dungeon Runners, a new MMO from MMO company NCSoft (of City of Heroes/Villains and Guild Wars fame). NCSoft released Guild Wars a few years ago, surprising gamers by offering MMO gameplay without a monthly fee; once you get Guild Wars, you can keep playing online indefinitely. Now the company has forgoing even the initial price tag with Dungeon Runners, an MMORPG that's free to download, free to start playing, and free to keep playing for as long as you want.
Dungeon Runners plays like a cross between Diablo and Guild Wars. Players can interact with each other and team up in public areas, then go into randomly generated private dungeons called instances created just for those cooperating players. It doesn't sound quite as massively multiplayer as games like World of Warcraft or City of Heroes, where most of the overworld is shared by thousands of gamers, but it still works out pretty well. Instanced dungeons mean that, while you won't randomly meet new people while slaying goblins, you also won't have to deal with rare monster farming, harassment, or many of the other problems that plague less-instanced games.
'Anarchy Online' might be a bit dated, but it's still free.
The gameplay itself is a bit lean. You're limited to only one race (human) and three classes (ranger, fighter, or mage). You can further customize your character with various skills and equipment, but the selection is still pretty sparse compared with most other MMOs' countless combinations of race, class, and appearance. The gameplay is just as simple, with plenty of click-to-attack action.
You can play the game for free, but if you want, you can also spend $5 per month for a Dungeon Runners membership. The extra fee can get you access to the highest-level equipment in the game, loot-saving features like a bank vault and potion-stacking, and higher priority when connecting to game servers. They're nice touches, but don't really seem worth $5 per month.
While Dungeon Runners might be one of the most up-to-date free MMOs out there, it's not quite the only one. Though several years old now, the cyberpunk MMO Anarchy Online can also be downloaded and played for free without any expansion content. Just like Dungeon Runners, though, you have to pay extra if you want to get more than the basic experience.
World of Warcraft has been a goldmine for Blizzard, but that can't be all it's working on. Back before WoW ate countless lives with its grinding, raiding, and leveling, Blizzard was known for awesome strategy games such as Warcraft and Starcraft, awesome action RPGs such as Diablo and Diablo II, and even awesome platform-puzzlers such as The Lost Vikings. All of these games seem to have been left at the wayside while Blizzard focuses on keeping its WoW servers up and running, and its players chipping in their monthly fee.
That can't be the whole story. Rumors abound about Blizzard's numerous, purely hypothetical projects. Kotaku recently reported about Blizzard hiring for a "next-gen MMO," and that a Korean Web site claimed that Blizzard will be announcing their next big project in May. All we have are rumors right now; Blizzard is indeed hiring new talent, but they might just be put to work on even more World of Warcraft content.
Still, rumors are fun, and it'll be interesting to see just what Blizzard might be working on. The company has a few great universes and a superlative back catalog of games. Here's a look at what Blizzard might be developing. Keep in mind that this is all speculation and shouldn't be taken seriously until Blizzard coughs up some concrete information.
World of Starcraft
The pitch: Terrans, Zerg, and Protoss continue their war with each other across different planets in a sci-fi MMORPG with plenty of cross-faction PVP action.
The case for: Starcraft is one of Blizzard's most beloved properties, and to this day it's an incredibly popular game. Tons of sci-fi fans would probably love to see Starcraft get the World of Warcraft treatment. Blizzard already has MMO infrastructure in place, so it probably wouldn't be nearly as complicated or time-consuming a development process as World of Warcraft.
The case against: Sci-fi MMOs tend to be tricky, with a lot more high-tech stuff that would be difficult to translate from RTS. Blizzard will have to get pretty creative with missions, since there are only so many Zerg holes a marine can clean out before he just gets sick of it.
The likelihood: Pretty good. Blizzard's already proven it can translate a great RTS property into a great MMO, and World of Starcraft would eat up all the Star Trek/Star Wars/Stargate nerds who are turned off by Warcraft's fantasy setting.
Starcraft 2
The pitch: Starcraft returns to the RTS form with better graphics, more units, deeper strategy, and possibly an additional faction or two.
The case for: The game is nine years old and people still play it to this day. A zerg-rushing celebration with modern graphics would be a sure hit.
The case against: Command and Conquer 3 and Supreme Commander are already wrestling for to billing in the sci-fi RTS genre, a genre that has shrunk in popularity in the last decade. It'll be pretty crowded in there, and Starcraft 2 will be showing up late to the game.
The likelihood: Pretty good. If done right, Starcraft 2 could completely bowl over Command and Conquer 3 and Supreme Commander and reclaim Blizzard's former title as king of the RTS.
Diablo 3
The pitch: The forces of hell are trying to take over the world once again, and you need stop them by creating a hero from a wider selection of classes and specialties, with bigger dungeons and more complex quests.
The case for: Diablo II was one of the most popular games of its time, and the addictive properties of leveling up, collecting equipment, and hacking through hundreds of demons simply doesn't get old.
The case against: Most of the developers of Diablo and Diablo II are working on Flagship Studios' Hellgate: London. Blizzard might not be able to make the same Diablo we knew and love.
The likelihood: Slim. World of Warcraft already satisfies most gamers' need for grinding, killing, and item collecting. Diablo 3 would add a little more action to the same basic, polished formula, probably without the lucrative monthly fee.
Warcraft 4
The pitch: Like World of Warcraft, only an RTS game.
The case for: There's a big fantasy RTS-shaped hole in today's game market that would easily be filled by Blizzard's biggest IP, Warcraft. It started as an RTS and would make sense to continue as one.
The case against: It would break WoW players out of the game with the inevitable major, world-changing storyline. Warcraft's story is already evolving through WoW's updates and expansions, and the sort of changes Warcraft 4 would probably make to the Warcraft universe would seriously unbalance that.
The likelihood: Slim, for now. When WoW starts to run down and Blizzard gets to work on World of Warcraft 2, it will be more likely for a Warcraft 4 to bridge the two MMO worlds.
The Lost Vikings 3
The pitch: Time-traveling Norsemen Erik, Baelog, and Olaf are back, and they're still trying to get home.
The case for: The Lost Vikings were awesome.
The case against: It's not Blizzard's most recognized property, and they've already gotten a respectable cameo in the Uldaman dungeon in World of Warcraft. It probably wouldn't translate well to 3D and modern graphics.
The likelihood: Not gonna happen. They might keep on making cameos, but we're not going to see a new, modern Lost Vikings game any time soon. Maybe a remake or two on the Nintendo DS or PSP, but that's the best we can hope for.
And before any of you ask, I didn't list Starcraft: Ghost because it's cancelled. It's not coming out. You're not going to be able to play it. It is not fated to be released on any platform. That is all.
(Credit:
Smooth Creations)
If you're not sure whether an outfit's colors go together, we've always been told, don't take a chance. But, as this PC ensemble proves, the monochromatic look isn't a slam dunk either, unless it's all black.
The "Diablo" custom gaming system from Smooth Creations can be ordered with a matching monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers and iPod, according to Chip Chick, in the hues of your choice. But we do hope that the color pictured here doesn't become too popular, as it appears to have produced the computing incarnation of Goldmember.
No matter how atrocious it may look on the outside, the system will still contain an impressive set of components including an Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Processor, 2GB of memory and a pair of 250GB hard drives, as well as two GeForce 8800 GTX cards. Still, at at a the price of $5,000, we think they should throw in a fashion consultant as well--for everyone's benefit.
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