Lets start off with some background information. In Just Cause 2 you play as Rico Rodriguez a agent for the agency.You go around doing mission in an attempt to cause chaos to unlock missions.
With a huge map and more places to go as you do more missions the game is fun packed. Explosions in every corner, and the grappling hook is the best part of the game. With the grappling hook you can grapple two people together and watch them collide with each other or, grapple someone off a building and watch them fall. But like any reviewer i must give the downside’s to the game. To some people it might just seem like your usual third person shooter where you go around in free roam and kill and destroy. There’s more to it.The main points of the downside is the controls. They do take some getting used to before you can play. But just after about ten minutes of playing i was set to go and have a rampage of fun!

So if your into third person shooter go pickup this game at your GameSpot or Walmart.

Intro
Assassin’s creed 2 is a single player, sandbox style game where you are put into the shoes of Ezio auditore da Firenze, an assassin.

Plot

The game starts off right where the first Assassins Creed game finished, with you playing the part of Desmond Miles, a former assassin. Lucy Stillman, who is an employee who is working undercover in abstergo industries, helps Desmond escape from abstergo industries. After Desmond and Lucy escape, they travel to an unknown place where Desmond finds out that Lucy is an assassin. Then Desmond enters the animus 2.0 (a device that lets people take control of their ancestors) and Desmond’s memories take him to the late 1400’s, Italy. There you take control of ezio auditore and his story of becoming an assassin.

Gameplay

Assassin’s creed 2 is a very long game, relatively easy difficulty with complex controls (e.g. X is fast walk and steal, but hold R1 and X lets you free run.) It is very much like prince of Persia when it comes to free running (big jumps, swinging from poles etc…) There is a wide variety of weapons to keep or just pick up, ranging from throwing knives to big, double bladed axes. It is an open world game, where you can travel to Florence, Italy, Forli, Tuscany and monteroggoni. There are also civilians roaming the streets, and they react to notorious actions (e.g. Kill a guard and they run away, or steal money off someone and get into a fight they will crowd around you) the guards also react to either impressive or socially unacceptable actions (e.g. Kill someone they immediately try to kill you.) there is also a notoriety icon in the top left corner of the screen, which is clear when you are not notorious, but it can fill up red if you commit crimes (e.g. if you steal, kill or get the guards on you) when your notoriety icon is clear, the guards will not notice you casually, but if it is full of red, they will instantly chase after you if your seen.

Graphics and sound

The graphics for the game are great, especially if you have it in HDMI, except for 1 small glitch- when you throw someone into a wall, sometimes there head goes into the wall when they fall over. There’s probably some more but I haven’t found any so far.
The sound is also great if you don’t have HDMI on it, but if you do it mutes the voices in cut scenes and some other things don’t make any noise, for example when you draw your sword or sometimes when you’re punching.

Overall

Over all I think the game is brilliant, save a few mutes in HDMI, and is definitely one the best games on ps3.

But this news is again negative – 2K has managed to mess up and not include proper widescreen support in the game on the PC. While you can happily select widescreen resolutions from within the game all these do is simply give a cropped version of the normal 4:3 version of the game. This means that instead of being able to see more on the screen left and right you’ll see the exact amount of space whether you have a big widescreen monitor or not.

Nearly all modern PC games – even many indie ones – include full widescreen support, and it doesn’t require hardly any time or effort to code it in. What’s even worse is that 2K Games made exactly the same mistake with the first BioShock and didn’t patch it for months. How can you make the exact same mistake twice, especially when PC gamers made such a fuss about it the first time round: It hardly passed under the radar!

The good news is the game is likely to be patched pretty quickly this time. A community manager for 2K games said the topic has been brought up with the development team and that a fix is on the way. We hope that this time it takes a few days rather than a few months!

It’s a shame such silly errors are marring an otherwise brilliant game. As for the DRM, the game was pirated several days before release… was it really worth it? Probably not.

StarCraft 2 will have a hefty single player mode, but it will be in the multiplayer mode where the game is likely to shine. That people are still playing StarCraft today years after its original release speaks volumes – how many other RTS games have come and gone in that time?

Of course, while StarCraft is a popular game in the UK the South Koreans go absolutely crazy for it, with tournaments regularly appearing on national television. We can’t really imagine an RTS tournament being put on after Eastenders.

But what people want to know is where to get a key for the beta. Blizzard have actually been releasing keys since March of 2008 so there are already a new of people with the keys who may well be receiving an email about joining the beta very soon. For those us without a key though, registering a battle.net account and checking the box to test out new games is the best choice although it’s likely people will be selected at random to participate.

Of course, there will likely be hundreds of competitions, promotions and giveaways across the net for the keys over the next few weeks, so we suggest keeping your eye out on the Blizzard twitter account and the gaming news. Blizzard has previously mentioned that people with a game registered to their Battle.net account or members of the original StarCraft community are more likely that receive keys than those who have not.

Of course, the game is a commercial success for BioWare, and so recently from its other smash RPG, Dragon Age that will see an expansion coming out in March and a sequel already on the cards. Bioware announced this week their intentions to make the Dragon Age sequel more visually attractive – one of the only weak points of the original game:

“I can confirm that we’re doing a lot of work on the Dragon Age engine, and doing a lot of stuff to pump it – to make it visually super hot.

I think the overall visual style we’re going to continue to evolve in Dragon Age. People are going to see some cool stuff. I can’t really say too much, but I think Dragon Age as a world is interesting. It’s a timeline, and you can go anywhere.”

The company have also stated that their best work is still ahead of them, and talked about their ambitions to make each game better than the last:

“The way we approach it is that each game has to be better than the last one, that’s always been true for the last 20 years we’ve been doing this, that’s just what we do. It’s kind of in our culture now.

If it wasn’t difficult it wouldn’t be worthwhile our best work is still ahead of us. That’s why I’m doing it, because I think our best work is still ahead of us and that’s why our teams are doing it I think."

It’s great to see a company that relies on well written stories and interesting gameplay mechanics doing so well. Here’s to Mass Effect 3 and Dragon Age 2!

The whole idea sounds a little like Microsoft’s service, Games for Windows Live, which is nearly universally hated by PC gamers for its poor quality. However, even GFWL doesn’t stop you from playing a game if you can’t get online, or pause the game when your net cuts out.

It may seem like a mute point for many people with computers online 24/7, but it’s a dangerous road to travel for many consumers. What are we going to do when Ubisoft’s servers go down? The games that we have purchased will be unplayable. Ubisoft have promised that they will patch any games to be playable offline if the service was ever closed permanently, but considering the only reason that would happen is if the company itself folded, we’re not convinced by that promise.

It feels like Ubisoft have decided that the small (but not insignificant) number of its customers that don’t have regular online access on the PC they play games are not worth their time. It may also mean that millions of people behind restrictive firewalls like university students may also remain unable to play Ubisoft games until they purchase their own internet connection or apply to lift access.

It seems like we’re covering this story every single week, but we feel like we should be giving our coverage to the problem of DRM. Between Bioshock 2, Modern Warfare 2, Starcraft 2 and Bad Company 2 it seems like PC gamers are being cheated out of an experience. As usual it’s a case of legitimate consumers being harmed by piracy. We’re pretty certain hacking groups will find a way around this new form DRM very quickly, while consumers will be stuck with it for the foreseeable future.

Around 20% of women have dumped a partner directly because of the online gaming habits, MyVoucherCodes revealed. The research also suggests that 80% of women believe that their partners spend too much time on the computer in general.

Oddly enough, Call of Duty is the number one game that is likely to break up a relationship.

Research Mark Pearson Commented:

“While men are more likely to spend their time running recon with, scoring goals against or shooting at people from all over the world, women are just as to blame for the time they spend online for relationship breakups according to the study.

I’m no relationship expert, but it seems that as technology improves, our ability to interact with those around us lessens – hopefully these statistics will be the push people need to reassess the way they treat loved ones.”

We’re not so sure about all that, and we agree with Mr. Pearson – it’s hardly like women aren’t often ‘addicted’ to online social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Besides, too much of anything is normally bad for you, and like everything in life, gaming is an activity best enjoyed in moderation.

Still, maybe we’ll think twice next time we want to play a game of Call of Duty online, huh? We’re just surprised the title winning the crown of most common to destroy a relationship wasn’t the huge time sink that is World of Warcraft!

The information was first revealed on Steam, which stated that the game would use both Games For Windows Live for activation, use SecuROM and have a maximum install limit of 15 times:

“Initial installation requires one-time internet connection; Ability to save game, earn achievements, receive title updates and online play requires log-in to Games for Windows LIVE; software installations required including Microsoft Visual C++2008 Runtime Libraries, Games for Windows LIVE client, Games for Windows LIVE Client Patch, Sony DADC SecuROM, Microsoft DirectX.”

“3rd-party DRM: SecuROM™ and Games for Windows LIVE 15 machine activation limit”

Some of this was later removed from the Steam page after the news hit. Currently nobody is quite sure about the level of DRM BioShock 2 is set to use. However, it’s been confirmed that the game will be using Games For Windows Live and will require online activation. This is a real shame considering how buggy and poorly made GFWL really is.

We hope it won’t get in the way of our enjoyment in the game too much, but it’s a shame to see another PC game get buried under anti piracy methods that simply do not work. It’s even stranger that BioShock developer 2K Games have decided on such strict DRM considering the large amount of negative press that was generated when the first game had a 5 computer installation limit – something they later removed.

Luckily only a few days later the BioWare team officially announced what they had been suggesting for some time – a full expansion to the original game. We’re not talking about a DLC here – this will be a proper full length expansion like they used to have in the old days. We haven’t seen a proper expansion for a console RPG since Oblivion, so this is exciting news.

The new expansion is called ‘Dragon Age: Awakening” and includes all the usual things you would expect from a proper expansion, new areas, new characters, the ability to import your old character into the game and of course an entirely new story to enjoy.

A Spokesman from BioWare said:

““Dragon Age: Origins, the Awakening expansion pack offers a brand new area of the world to explore known as Amaranthine, featuring an epic story that will allow players to unravel the secrets of the darkspawn – and their true motivations!

Players will face a range of horrific and terrifying creatures including an evolved, intelligent breed of darkspawn and other menacing creatures such as the Inferno Golem and Spectral Dragon.”

The official release date for the expansion is March 16^th, although considering BioWare just missed their latest release date for a small DLC pack we’re not entirely convinced we’ll see Awakening arrive exactly on that date. Still, we can always hope!

Co-Founder of BioWare Dr. Ray Muzyka said:

“The vibrant worldwide community of Dragon Age fans will relish uncovering the secret motivations of the darkspawn, revealing how the darkspawn continue to infest the world despite the defeat of the Archdemon.”

The game that plays host to the space station is Entropia Universe. It’s a PC only endeavour that’s a bit like a mix between a standard MMORPG and a more social based environment such as the more famous Second Life. You can play the game for free, although if you want to do anything but chat and ‘sweat’ at enemies, you have to start throwing money into the game.

Having never got a chance to play Entropia we can’t make many comments on the community or the reasoning behind the purchase, but in case you’re wondering if the buyer, Buzz ‘Erik’ Lightyear is absolutely insane, there does appear to be a small bit of sense in the purchase.

The games currency called PED can be converted directly into dollars and back again, and the space station is the only place in the game where certain actions can be performed. Therefore, the only of the space station can make real money by setting a tax rate in PED which he can then convert back to dollars.

Still, it just seems like an amazing amount of money to spend out on something that doesn’t exist. We wonder who the buyer would feel if MindArk – the games developers – were to simply shut down their servers tomorrow leaving him nearly a quarter of a million pounds overdrawn with no space station in sight.

We’re keen to hear from any Entropia Universe players on if Erik’s purchase is likely to ever make him back the money!