Ikariam

So as a fellow gamer I know we all love free games, provided they are fun of course. Well I have come across a free browser game called Ikariam.

The game plays out as a civilization builder where you populate a town on an island. You work you way up by gathering wood and one other resource that the island provides. Eventually you get the opportunity to start a colony on an island of your choice. Take care when choosing, because the primary reason for your decision is which alternate resource do you want. The decision is important since you wont be making another colony for some time.

Another great idea is to build up a city army for defense and upgrade your wall to keep the rabble from trying to take over. Over all the game is great and definitely worth trying if have 5 minutes of down time. It takes a while to build/upgrade things later so you can set it t build and log off (ie: the perfect game for work).

Let me know what you guys think, I believe you will be impressed.

Savage 2 Revealed...

So having spent some time with the demo of the game, which I felt was enough time to give this game a fair shake I have composed this little review of the game.

Obviously since the game is a little older now the graphics are a little dated compared to some of the newer games on the market, but having grown up in the Mario bros. era anything better is beautiful to me. From the limited time I had, getting into a local server was much harder than I had originally thought. It seems like there not as many people playing in the US as there are in say the UK. This lead to the actual full servers that I played on to be more sluggish than usual and did detract from the experience. The actual game play was interesting with the fusion of the RTS elements from the Commander and the FPS of the soldier view it was nothing short of an interesting experience to be sure.

The classes in the game were fun to play, interesting in their own way, and lead to some interesting little skirmishes in the midst of the big battle. Mid way throughout the game there were some demon classes unlocked by gathering souls and those were definitely the embodiment of destruction as they cleared armies of guys in their wake.

Overall I would say the game is definitely fun to play, but if you are big into the latest graphics you could do much better for the $29.99 price tag that comes with it. I would recommend people head to their website here and download the free demo which turns out to be about 5 hours of play time (meaning only when you are in a game) so you don't have to worry about wasting time in the lobbies.

My obligatory number score for this one is a 8/10 for their unique fusion of two pretty straight forward genres.

Savage 2 Introduction

So I came across this game while skulking around the Internet and the concept of it intrigued me. This RTS/FPS hybrid could, if done right, be something truly amazing. While this game is not new it is to me and I am sure to many readers as well so I think I am going to download the trial version and give the game a shot.

Here's an overview of the game...

Set in a fantasy setting the game centers around combat between two races: Man and Beast. Now this is not to say there are little wolves running around. No, these beasts mean business. They have shape shifters, shamans and so much more. I refuse to go into detail on the story because it is actually really good and my synopsis of it will not do it justice. So for those of you interested in it go here and enjoy a well written tale that sets up the game perfectly.

Now each side has a commander that plays the game like an RTS via a star/warcraft-esce interface. From the screens I have seen there is the typical building of the base and researching aspects of the typical RTS games. However unlike those games the commander does not have direct control over the units. These units are actually other players playing out from a First Person Shooter perspective or FPS. The commander can set way points and targets for his/her units and give buffs to the units or debuff the enemies. The object is to destroy the enemies base as a standard RTS objective.

I will provide more as I give the trial a shot.

R6V2 update...

It appears that Ubi soft has done something to remedy their network issues with their latest rendition of the Vegas title. They seem to have performed some update to their databases (woo no download required) and fixed the issue of people dropping and failing to join games. The trade off is that people are reporting more lag than usual but nothing game breaking for most. I personally think it's a fair trade and a step in the right direction.

Wii!

Ok so I got a Wii finally and loaded up Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The game itself is the same as all the other iterations of the series, but like trend has shown adds a lot of stuff that makes it a more than worth while purchase. Like a ton of new characters ranging from Solid Snake to Sonic.

One of the most important additions to this game is the use of online playability. The game allows you to match make with others or join games with your friends. These are the modes that were to be expected. One of the unforeseen modes called "spectator" mode allows the player to watch a game and bet coins on the outcome of the match. Now this may not sound like much but it can be quite entertaining to watch four iconic characters beat the ever-loving crap out of each other and have a stake in the outcome. By all means the online gaming experience that Nintendo has brought is not the utopia I would like it to be. There is no voice chat feature which can definitely detract from the experience, as well as you can't invite friends to your games...you just have to start one and hope they notice and join.

Over all even though it is more of the same but better my obligatory number score is a 9/10. Go out and pick the game up if you want to smash digital faces and enjoy yourself for hours on end.