Age of Conan - Hyborian Adventures Visit Report

Norway is renowned for its scenic panoramas, but much of its terrain is rugged, consisting of mountains, lakes and fjords. As a result, early communities tended to be in coastal areas rather than inland, with trade and war conducted by boat. Around 800 AD, the development of longships made it possible to travel much greater distances. Powered by sail and oars, they were seaworthy enough to cross open waters. In addition, they had broad, flat bottoms, which meant they could navigate fairly shallow rivers to penetrate inland, which saved the warriors from having to walk as far in search of places to attack, or back with their plunder. The Viking Age that ensued would last until about 1100. During this period, the Norsemen ranged across most of Europe. They also found North America hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus did.

Within the massively multiplayer sector, Funcom is a pioneer in its own right, having launched Anarchy Online in mid-2001. Located in the picturesque Norwegian capital of Oslo, the company is currently busy preparing to launch Age of Conan - Hyborian Adventures, its endeavor based on the popular universe created several decades ago by renowned fantasy, action and adventure writer Robert E. Howard. We've been tracking this intriguing endeavor with mounting interest ever since it was first announced, looking forward to adventuring in the virtual lands of Aquilonia, Cimmeria and Stygia, which are based on Roman, Celtic and Egyptian themes respectively. So, when we were invited to attend a community and media event last week, we were definitely keen to go since we knew that doing so would give us the chance to speak with a number of the core developers.

Fortunately, they all speak English. This is a necessity. Norway's entire population is a mere 4.7 million. Since this means the country doesn't have many native game developers, Funcom's staff, which recently topped 300, includes recruits from more than 20 other nations. It's difficult to imagine the chaos if they didn't have a common working language, even though it's the first for only a relative minority. To those who have only experienced unilingual workplaces, this may seem rather trivial. It's not. During my time in another industry, I had occasion to work for a while in French. You get used to it, so it becomes easier over time, but it's not the same as working in your native tongue.

Funcom occupies most of a small office building in Oslo. Last Friday, that was the destination for another multi-national group consisting of invitees from France, Germany, Italy, Canada, the US, Australia and more. Just before we arrived, we were treated to a little show. A sword-bearing horseman rode up, declaring he would protect us from the dangers that lay in our path. Sure enough, an armed encounter ensued, involving another rider, a combatant on foot and a blonde female archer who bore blue painted markings like those of the brunette you can see on the official website, which was re-launched that same day. During the battle, I was pleased to have a few words with Anarchy Online Game Director Craig Morrison, formerly a Vault Network fansite editor.

Having survived unscathed, we had the opportunity to exchange greetings with a couple of the team members, Game Director Gaute Godager, who is perhaps best described as the primary holder of the project's core vision, and Associate Producer Morten Byom plus Product Director Jorgen Tharaldsen, Product Manager Erling Ellingsen and Community Manager Shannon Drake. Most of the other developers were temporarily unavailable due to morning meetings. We were told these take place every day to help maintain communication and coordination, both overall and within various strike teams that have been set up to focus on specific aspects of the endeavor; for example, one such group is concentrating on the experience during levels 1 to 40, while another is dedicated to the high-end game.

The presentation portion of the day began with a brief history. According to Godager, the project dates from about four and a half years ago. Back then, his thinking was to make something that would have a more active combat system than was common, and be story-driven, especially in the early portion. Among various licenses considered, Conan was available and seemed like a good fit. Apparently, it has been in a way that some properties aren't; the team has reportedly been given quite a bit of creative leeway to work within and adapt the rich background lore. A related goal has always been to capture the franchise's dark, violent, mature and not always politically correct mood. In this regard, we were officially informed that the ESRB's rating in North America will be an M, while that of the nearest European equivalent, PEGI, will be 18+.

Since it would require much more than just a single day to over a huge endeavor like Age of Conan in any real depth, the event was designed to spotlight certain elements. One was crafting. Each country - Aquilonia, Cimmeria and Stygia - will have a resource-rich playfield (Funcom's term for a zone) where tradeskills are the primary focus. The system itself will be quest-based. This not only reflects the previously mentioned emphasis on story, it also means players won't be required to make dozens or even hundreds of items in order to practice and improve enough to make dozens or hundreds of slightly better ones. Instead, we'll advance by completing tasks assigned by trainer NPCs.

Pc Games Enemy Territory Quake Wars

With Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, developer Splash Damage is finally following up on Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, one of the finest team-based Nazi killing shooters you could play. This time, they've taken id's gorgeous Doom 3 engine and used it to create vast intricate playgrounds for fast and frantic battles between humans and cybernetic alien invaders. Quake Wars are on!

As far as team-based shooters go, this is one of the more frenetic. Don't get too attached to any given situation. It's going to change. Like Quake itself, Quake Wars is hyperkinetic, deadly, and nimble. There's always a vehicle to hop into, the respawns come every thirty seconds, and the location of the fighting is liable to shift in the blink of an eye. This is a game that barely gives you time to breathe. Don't even think about trying to scratch your nose, much less get up and grab a drink from the kitchen.

That's not to say there isn't a lot of strategy in Quake Wars. Each class has a variety of functions, and none of them are at the back of the battle (in fact, accomplishing many objectives requires a particular class to come forward). Unlike the Battlefield series, important functions like radar and artillery are associated with a class rather than a commander. Engineers make a huge difference in terms of building and maintaining defenses, as well as laying mines. The covert ops radar is a must, and their ability to assume disguises makes for some delicious backstabbing. Classes and loadouts are flexible enough to fight in a number of different ways. The mission system keeps everyone informed about what needs doing, as well as what tasks your class can contribute at any time. Quake Wars does a great job of not being confusing.

It's disappointing that the maps don't have more variety. At first blush, they seem distinct, but the more you play, the more the maps blend together. One city or one indoor area feels like any other, and the sci-fi gobbledygook objectives don't add much character. There's room to maneuver around the battlefield, but not to roam or stray. At any point in a match, there's always one attacker and one defender, almost always squaring off over a single location. While this does a great job of giving the gameplay focus, you can't help but sometimes feel a little hemmed in. This is a game about being on the front lines of battle, and not about sneaking around in the enemy's rear to wreak havoc.

World in Conflict

Get the tactical splendor of a strategy game with the pace and visuals of a shooter.

Sometimes stuff just works. It doesn't happen often enough in the gaming world, but every once in a while a title comes along that puts everything together in such an appealing and enjoyable package you have to step back and say "Wow." Once that initial euphoria wears off, though, you have to get back to the controls because the Soviet Union has just invaded Seattle, Spetznatz units are holding the Statue of Liberty hostage and the President is about to drop a nuclear bomb on the small town from "Gremlins." That's the experience of playing World in Conflict, a real-time strategy masterpiece from Massive Entertainment that -- if judged by the amount of times I annoyed the other GameSpy editors by yelling "This is freakin' awesome!" while playing -- is easily one of the best gaming experiences of 2007.

The fun begins with a premise ripped straight out of the Red Dawn Cold War book of nightmares. It's 1989 and The Soviet Union is one final five-year-plan away from total economic collapse. Seeing which way the wind is blowing, the hard-line Communist leadership squashes the nascent ideas of glasnost and perestroika and starts moving troops across the Fulda Gap in a desperate gamble to conquer the free world. NATO forces engage the Russians and the Cold War goes hot all across Europe. Unfortunately for the U.S., getting bogged down in Europe means domestic defense isn't quite up to the task of pushing off one last Russian gambit -- a daring assault on the West Coast of mainland America. That not only lets players get their hands on a lot of vintage US, Soviet and NATO military hardware, but also takes them on a grand tour of World War III battlefields ranging from downtown Seattle to the New York harbor to Marseilles, France to the frozen forests of Murmansk in the Soviet Union.

The single-player campaign follows the course of the war through the story of Lieutenant Parker, the faceless soldier that serves as the alter-ego of the player. Parker's commander is Colonel Sawyer, a man pulled out of retirement to command the West Coast resistance against the Soviets. His other companions are Captain Webb in support and tank commander Captain Bannon. Each of these men is provided with an interesting character arc (particularly Bannon) that weaves its way around the different missions in a surprisingly moving and well-written story contributed by noted author Larry Bond.

The game's storyline is presented via a well-done series of cut scenes, in-mission briefings and voiceovers that play over what look like concept art for the game. Of the three different types of presentations, it's only the concept drawings that provide a false note. The cuts scenes in the game are done in-engine and the engine that runs this game is so powerful and beautiful it seems almost criminal to use anything other than it to convey information to the player. This ends up being a minor complaint, as the real stars of the game's storyline are its voiceovers. Each of them is pitch-perfect, especially Alec Baldwin's narration. His gravelly delivery of a reminiscing Lieutenant Parker grounds the game emotionally, conveying the world-weary tones of a WWIII vet as though distance in time from the events of the war has given him the wisdom and perspective to fully understand them.

Video Game Myths

Mikey and the Pop Rocks. The Kidney Thieves. Richard Gere and the Gerbil. In addition to being great band names, they're all urban legends, modern day folklore that somehow transcend their obvious fallacies to become curious facts. From hook-handed serial killers to microwaved poodles, tall tales of outrageous acts are as entertaining as they are exaggerated.

As it turns out, video games enjoy their fair share of mythical events and lost legends, some of which are, startlingly enough, actually true. Read on to find out if the following famous video game myths are facts or fictions.

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Nintendo's classic arcade game Donkey Kong was actually a mistranslation. It should have been called Monkey Kong.

We're the first to admit that the 'Donkey' in Donkey Kong is one of the more mystifying title choices in video game history (right behind the 'Final' in Final Fantasy), but it was just that - a choice, not a mistranslation.

It was also the brainchild of legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto, who was handed the reigns of this, his very first video game, back in 1981.Based loosely on the comic strip Popeye, Donkey Kong erupted into the public consciousness and skyrocketed to worldwide fame. As Nintendo's first bona fide hit in North America, it also launched the career of carpenter-turned-plumber Mario.

So what about that oddball name? For years, the popular theory was that something funny happened on the way to production - a blurred fax, perhaps - and those wacky Japanese misprinted the word "Monkey" as "Donkey." Inexplicably, this was accepted as fact by most gamers until Miyamoto himself cleared the air by insisting that "donkey" was intentional all along. According to the designer, the word was simply meant to indicate stubborn stupidity, while "kong" was just a doff of the cap to the great cinematic ape. Put the two together and you've got a 'stupid ape,' a landmark video game, and a myth debunked.

Fact or Fiction? Fiction!

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Saddam Hussein purchased thousands of Playstation 2s to build military supercomputers.

Seven years before The Great Nintendo Wii Drought of 2007 (and, most likely, 2008), gamers faced similar troubles trying to locate units of Sony's unstoppable Playstation 2.

Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, however, was able to scoop up a whopping 4,000 PS2s without so much as a pre-order. And according to a report on the website worldnetdaily.com, the dictator wasn't just planning an all-night LAN party: he was securing PS2s in an effort to build a nefarious military supercomputer, since U.S. customs doesn't consider a 'toy' to be a potential military threat.

Sound ridiculous? It should. For starters, claims by an anonymous military insider regarding the sheer processing potency of the PS2 were at best vastly overstated and at worst, flat out untrue. Legitimate desktop PCs with far more processing power were as common in Iraq as anywhere else in the world in the year 2000; why cobble together a crippled network using thousands of networked Playstations when you could simply plug into a few Dells instead? In fact, no sooner had the article hit internet gossip channels than government officials in the U.K. thoroughly debunked the claim.

Assassin's Creed

Move over, games of 2007! The best looking game of the year just arrived and it's called Assassin's Creed. This historical epic is set in the Middle East during the Middle Ages, but there's nothing middling about the way it looks and plays.

Assassin's Creed is a heady cocktail of stuff you've seen in other games. Take one part Grand Theft Auto's open city, one part Crackdown's crazy acrobatic antics, and one part Hitman's painstakingly engineered assassination missions. Now top it off with a spicy historical Middle Eastern setting and serve it up in some of the most jaw-droppingly amazing graphics you've ever seen. The result is another masterpiece from Ubisoft Montreal.

You begin the game as a haughty member of a secret society of assassins. After a fall from grace, you have to work your way back up the ranks of your sect by taking out nine targets for your master. These targets are spread among three cities, which are separated by a "kingdom" area you can cross on horseback. Once you reach a city, you have to explore it in order to gather information about your target.

You'll engage in side activities like picking pockets to snatch maps, running courses in a set amount of time, bullying public speakers when they retire down dark alleys, or doing a little freelance assassinating. All the while, you're trying to keep a low profile in the context of Assassin's Creed's system of socially acceptable actions vs. socially unacceptable actions. If you don't behave yourself, the city guards will be on you faster than a SWAT team from San Andreas.

These cities have to be seen to be believed. There are open marketplaces, courtyards, mosques, castles, villas, barracks, harbors, and more. And it's all actually in the game. If you can see it, you can reach it. It's amazing that Ubisoft was able to combine so much photorealistic details and elaborate architecture with such a ridiculously long viewing range.

When you consider that it's not uncommon to have 50 characters milling around in an open marketplace, this is a stunning achievement. And it's not simply cosmetic. You'll learn to hate those stupid beggars who get in your way, and you'll find yourself looking for thugs from whom to steal more throwing knives. The crowds also offer plenty of commentary if you break away and start climbing walls. They'll panic when a fight breaks out. If you save persecuted citizens, you can even recruit vigilantes who will help you during a fight.

The animation for the characters is every bit as good as it was in Prince of Persia. But instead of that game's dungeons, your acrobatics are now an option for moving around an entire city, from steeples to alleyways to balconies to castle walls. At first, it's easy to get stuck on ladders and ledges, but once you get used to the simple control system, you'll be nimble beyond your wildest dreams.

The animation and simple controls really come into their own during the swordfights, which are a spectacle in their own right. This isn't one of those stealth games where you're too weak to put up a fight. Here you'll engage in some of the most detailed swordfighting we've ever seen in a game, and we can't get enough of it. Which is a good thing, because there's a lot of it in Assassin's Creed.

The storyline is a bit bizarre, and by the time it's over, it's hard to figure out what just happened. It doesn't help that the game flashes back and forth between specific timeframes (to avoid spoilers, we won't say any more).

But Assassin's Creed is a solid enough game to overcome its awkward plot device. It doesn't much matter why you're in the situation you're in. What matters are those wonderful moments when you're sitting on a tower overlooking one of the most gorgeous cities you've ever seen in a game, and you know it's all yours to play in.

pc games Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Review

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Time to kick some shell.

It's been a while since we've been able to kick some shell with four giant, ninjitsu wielding, turtles. Spawned in 1984 by a healthy dose of green ooze and two hardworking artists, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, the Mutant Ninja Turtles started a nationwide craze. These rat educated turtles popularized words like "cowabunga," "radical," and "totally tubular." Everything from animated series, toys, comics, and lunchboxes to live action movies possessed some form of Turtle power.

However, out of the slew of licensed memorabilia, the one product that stands out is (at least in my mind) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Arcade. Countless hours and quarters were sucked into Dimension X thanks to the addictive power of this brawler. It's doubtful whether this arcade classic would hold the same level of appeal if it weren't TMNT, but the combination of fast paced action and turtle power had a magical hold on those who played it. Now that the turtles have been resurrected in cartoon form on Fox, it's no surprise that Konami has tried to recapture the arcade spirit with a whole new TMNT experience.

The Facts

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles first appearance on current consoles
• Based off the new animated series
• Play as any of the four turtles through six foot clan laden stages
• Two player story mode co-op
• Two player versus mode
• Discover scrolls and find items that will unlock special attack moves and special effects
• Interact with Splinter, Casey Jones, April O'Neal, Baxter Stockman and Shredder
• Unlock character art from the animated show

Gameplay From the moment you boot up TMNT, you'll notice that everything reeks of turtles, albeit the new series. As the intro plays, you're introduced to the four turtles, you hear their new anthem, and catch a glimpse of the cartoon's new art style. Jump into story mode, pick your favorite of the four turtles (no one has an advantage over the others), and watch as the story unfolds via cut scenes straight from the cartoon. Once the animated portion ends, you're dropped into a minimally animated in-game dialogue -- and once you get through the wordy conversation, it's time to kick some shell. This is where your excitement peaks -- you're about to face legions of mousers and foot soldiers just so you can eventually fight your nemesis, Shredder -- then the game actually starts and your interest soon fades away.

Your turtle heroes, for all the ninjitsu Splinter has taught them, have a limited arsenal of moves. A basic attack, a sweeping attack (can drop surrounding enemies), and an upper cut are the extent of your punches and kicks, although you can combine button presses in various ways for different finishing moves. You also can carry shurikens, but they cause so little damage that they're really only useful for igniting barrels of flammable material. The turtles can't even perform jump attacks at first -- for some reason it requires their sensei, Splinter, to explain how to jump and then attack.

pc games Pirates of the Burning Sea Review

Pirates of the Burning Sea Review

The world of massively-multiplayer games is depressingly uniform. Peruse the MMO rack of your local game emporium, and all you'll see is box after box of tired old pseudo-Tolkien prattle, with the odd sci-fi space epic thrown in for good measure. And given that we're pretty much obliged to play them all, we've reached the point where if we have to kill another goblin or collect another rat skull, we're going to collectively hurl ourselves into Yahoo!'s Crack of Doom (tm).

Which is the main reason we like Pirates of the Burning Sea so much. There's nary an elf, mage, or hey-nonny-nonny to be seen. Instead, Pirates takes place in an idealized, Errol Flynn version of the 1720s Caribbean, and boy, does it make the most of it. We challenge any new player, upon logging into the game for the first time, not to head for the chat box and start rolling out the pirate talk cliches. It looks the part, it definitely sounds the part, and the atmosphere is laid on so thick you can practically smell the heady mix of rum and tobacco oozing out of your monitor.

Setting Pirates in its proper place in the incestuous family tree of video games is tricky, but it's rather like a cross between the all-too-familiar melee combat of World of Warcraft, the outstanding economic system from niche space MMO Eve Online, and the ship-to-ship combat from Sid Meier's Pirates. If you've never played any of those, don't worry: the game eases you into its more intricate mechanics with well-conceived tutorial missions.

As you start the game, you're shoved into the cut-and-thrust world of the Spanish Main already a captain. Spared the worries of recruiting a crew and buying your first ship, you're set up with a basic vessel and the patronage of British, French, or Spanish monarchs. If those don't appeal, you can opt to freelance by joining a kind of pirate coalition.

From there, you're free to roam the open sea to your heart's content. You'll spot many other ships, both player-run and computer-controlled. Although there are safe zones where you can't be attacked by other players, the Spanish Main is a dangerous place. Venture beyond those zones and you're fair game for players of opposing nations; and yes, if you're beaten you run the risk of losing your ship and belongings.

Appropriately, ship-to-ship combat is one of the areas where Pirates really shows its mettle. Successful captains have to balance all kinds of factors: wind speed and direction, armor levels, hull strength, different shot types, and more special abilities than you can shake a mast at. Practice enough and you can take down larger vessels, especially if you have a couple of co-conspirators - and if you can get in close enough, you can attempt to grapple and board the ship.