Well Im quite suprised.

Usually I try out a facebook game and am bitterly disappointed. Sometimes im pleasantly suprised, only to find the core game really isnt that great. This time, im actually quite shocked at how good this game is.

GodWar by IGG is a 3D in-browser MMORPG.

Its no WoW, lets get that outta the way first before Im flooded with trolls posting comments about it.

GodWar is a full MMO that isnt plagued with micro transations (although it does have them). The graphics are sharp and its got a nice depth to the story. All of which are based within a Greek themed world.

The game begins with no real introduction, just a choice of servers and then your into character creation.

This is a solid character creation suite, pretty well done, although as you would expect there arent many options avaliable to you. Additionally the issue of which faction you wish to be isnt described accurately which is a shame. In fact, descriptions for both are the same but with the faction name changed in each.

So you can chose from 4 classes, a Mage, Warrior, Champion and Preist. Ive only played warrior so far, its an all/round DPS Tank. Champion is more about Magical/physical power. mage is elemental damage and preist is all healing stuffs.

So, you get into the game and the tutorial is a very good ease into the game, however, it isnt quite enough. For example, it explains movement and basic things such as inventory. But everything else it misses... and theres a LOT to take in.

Quests are the same old go to X and kill Y amount of Z. Its okay, but rediculously easy. All you need to do is open the quest text when accepted and click the monster name. This automatically takes your character to the mob. Doing the same with the questgiver name when finished takes you to the NPC. Its all very easy, even combat takes less than 10 seconds to down something, even monsters 20 levels above yourself.

All this of course is excusable. The model for the MMO on Facebook is casual, and so it is entirely possible to forgive these issues.

Theres lots to do off the side, not in the way of side-quests however, and this is a problem. There are none. That aside though, you can forge weapons and get pets, all of which arent clearly shown when you can do them. This is also a problem.

And that is this games biggest problem, so much to do, so little explaination. In fact a lot of the time nothings even made aware to you until you accidentally click something.

Gaining weapons and armour is set at a steady pace and everything looks different, no texture swaps or armour that looks the same for 10 levels.

Levelling is also quite quick, not too quick, but most EXP is given my questgivers, so you dont have to grind at all! There are also quizzes which award a generous amount of EXP. There are also "nameplates".

Most quests award a decent chunk of EXP relative to your level. So for each level you are at, the questgiver will award approxamately 60 - 70% of a level's worth of EXP on each hand in. Nameplates however are special. You may collect one each day. Nameplate 1 on Monday, Nameplate 2 on Tuesday and so on. When Monday comes back round you hand in Plate 1 again (you keep it though). This awards you with upto 300% EXP than what you would get from a questgiver (at lower levels anyway).

Most MMO fans will laugh hard with this next feature. A fully legit bot tool. Thats right! Cant be bothered to fight a mob? It does it for you. It doesnt pick up items however, but theres nothing to stop you putting it on when you leave for work or school, uni, college etc, and being level million when you come back.

Now lets discuss graphics. Its all full 3D, characters look good and dont look out of place, enemies are also well designed unlike in most throw-away MMO's.

Sound on the other hand is abysmal. Sound effects are cool, but the music is stock and quite repetative, it also doesnt really match the games theme at times.

Saying that though, the game is still rather solid.

So, overall the game is good. Its not going to consume you like other MMORPG's would, but I found myself strangely amused by it.

I reccomend giving it a try, try to get over its faults, and you should have some fun.

Check it out here.

Story: 4.0

Graphics: 8.0

Audio: 4.0

Lifespan: 5.0

Overall: Good

Update: Im level 30 and took down a level 121 enemy with only 6% damage done to me... yeah!

Well Ive been inactive for quite a long time now.

Firstly, HAPPY NEW YEAR one and all.

Lets hope that 2011 will be an amazing year for gaming, the last thing we need is more rubbish games.

Secondly, Ive been cleaning the blog up a bit today, removed the minecraft feature, I wasnt feeling it and it looked ugly.

Thirdly, expect some reveiws soon.

Well, I think thats it, have a good one guys!

Now, there are times in games where you think, man, im doing great.

There are also times when you think... I messed up bro.

And there are then times where you think "I messed up bro" and are then ridiculed by the game.

In this feature I'm going to be covering a few of my personal audio pieces from games that are what I affectionately call "p*ss take death music".

Its the kind of music that doesnt so much say "yeah, another life to go" but instead says "what the f**k are you doing playing me? Im a higher being than you. I'm offended that you would even play me"

Its the kind of music that makes you rage, and FORCES you to listen to it as your character dies.

First stop, Mario.

Now the mario series has got so many memorable tunes and some of the best examples of song-writing in video games, but when I hear these tunes I want to smash up the entire room.

Mario Bros 1

Mario Bros 3

Mario Bros 3 almost destroyed my SNES, but in any case, there are others.

Now in the SEGA Rally example, lets imagine that you were trying really hard to complete a stage and then you heard the "game over YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"tune. Imagine that on ANY game. Crikey, why didnt they just have a guy saying "You f**ckin SUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK"

This example from Donkey Kong Country is probally one of the worst. Not content with freezing the game for a second as you hit an enemy so you can SEE the look of pain and "man we messed up" on the Kong's face, the game also has to add a voice clip of an "ouch" just to make sure you KNOW its over. What could possibly make that experience any more annoying? This could. Happily upbeat, the game doesnt care. Heck, it would be filing its nails if it could, as you rage at it saying hurry the hell up.

And finally, who could forget this.

And more importantly...

This

Well, tonight for the past few hours Ive been playing my Limited Collectors Edition of Fable III (360 Ver).

And wow, what can I say, Lionhead have done a great job with this one.

Now, just as a warning, this is a simple mini-review I thought I'd write up. Its not a full in-depth one, and lets face it, 2.52am isnt the time to do it.

So, with that said, where do I begin?

I honestly dont know what all the negativity was about. All-in-all, major changes, noticable changes, include faster saving.

Loading is also WAAAAY faster, this, for Fable II players will be a godsend. For those who havent played FII, loading times were uncomfortably slow, this game features a massive overhaul that makes it better. There is one long loading time, the beginning, but that's all I saw.

Additionally, the characters are modelled better, environments are beautiful and open. They arent all fully explorable however, as per Fable rules, but still, they are much better to look at.

The story is dramatic and captivating right from the get-go, creating events that put the player into strong moral catch-22's.

The cast is also brilliant, and feel natural. John Cleese as the butler is definately a great highlight. Nobody sounds forced, it all just... works.

The big boo hoo that the press had was there are no pause menus, you have to visit a new area... let me just say, "what"?

I was also skeptical when I heard. "oh theyve buggered it up already". Not at all. It literally takes you out of the game for 30 seconds if that, AND to boot, the loading between this and the actual game is lightning fast.

I did find about 5 glitches in the time playing that were simply cosmetic, a few that werent. One involved walking through a tree, the only one that I could might I add. Another included characters looking the wrong way in a cutscene, but this was auto-corrected almost immediately. Textures do pop in sometimes however, but it isnt quite as noticable as that in Unreal Tournament 3.

The biggest one I found was an issue with a pre-rendered animation that lagged out a few times, but that could just be my console.

So, there you go, the good, the bad and the ugly.

This game is highlyrecommended, and is a big improvement on the second one.

Thanks for reading!

Well the hilarity continues over at Valve with one of their most recent patches. Either theyve had to patch left 4 Dead 2 so many times theyve actually gone insane, or someones messed up...

See anything wrong? Look a little closer...

Fixed the fix of the fix of the fix of the door exploit in "no mercy"?

Yup, they've gone mad.

I dont know why Im so amped about this post, probally because its the first one in what seems to be a century, and Ive finally got time to do it.

So im guessing you are wondering what this feature is, well, good question.

Glitches.

We've all been there, seen one or at least experienced them in some way.

They are pot holes in the road of a game but when do we ever hear about them being celebrated?

To be fair, never, and (from a development point of veiw) they shouldnt be. But when your character gets flung 50 yards accross the map because he got snagged on a tree, when is that never fun.

Glitches although bad in programming terms, and sometimes actually quite dangerous, are mostly hilarious events which make a game more memorable. Today, I hope to write about the wonder of glitch.

In this first part of a 2 part series, Ill be looking at the small bugs that make experiences in their own right.

Im going to start by covering what can easily be the most memorable glitch of all time.

Missingno, If you havent heard of this guy, youve been living under a rock. Missingno (of Pokemon Red/Blue fame) is a perfect example of a somewhat creepy glitch, and also a quite dangerous one.

This fellow appeared in the game due to a programming error, which left a column of "tiles" to the right of Cinnabar island open to the player when it shouldnt have been. The column was a data area where pokemon information could be saved, unfortunately this was stored in a "wild pokemon" zone, so the player was basically fighting scrambled data.

This produced the name MissingNo or "Missing Number", as the pokemon didnt exist, and wasnt defined as anything in-game. Creepy huh?

Upon levelling the creature up, it would evolve into Kangaskahn, and 9 times out of 10 it would also corrupt the game cartridge if the game was saved afterwards.

So why celebrate this guy? Well, it was one of the first (mainstream) glitches that everyone knew about, and used. Once one person found it, everyone else wanted to know how to do it. But apart from the fact it corrupts the game, it also duplicated items.

Wanted 255 master balls? You got it! This baby could do it. For that alone, this guy is awesome.

Check out this videoif youre interested. Disclaimer: I do not, and will not take any responsibility for any damage to your cartridge arising out of using this trick.

Sticking with pokemon for now, there was also another pretty weird glitch that had people talking, glitch city.

Thats right, a city of glitches. Well, not quite, it was one big glitch. Getting to this place required doing some walking about, saving where you shouldnt be able to, hard re-setting the console, and then walking around some more. The player would then be forced into this area of nothing but spam and data. Corrupted tile sets and would more often than not, get snagged in some geometry.

It was possible to surf there, however this always led to getting snagged on invisible geometry as well.

See this videoto check it out.

So upto this point we've seen some pretty awesome stuff. We've seen total destruction and strange environments. The fun in these glitches was finding them, or actually achieving them. The feeling "oh it actually works" and seeing all this messed up stuff is quite exciting.

But what about getting to areas you werent meant to get to? GTA 3 had a great example of this, the Ghost Town.

This area of Liberty City, really isnt a recognised area at all in the terms that it doesnt actually belong in LC geographically. For those of you who havent played GTA 3, the opening cutscene shows the protaganist "claude" chasing a woman named Catalina out of a bank that had obviously just been robbed. She shoots him, and he ends up getting busted.

This whole cutscene was shot in the "Ghost Town" area, but Rockstar must have thought it was not possible to put this area into the game anywhere. It is not known why it was removed into an instanced area.

The greatest thing about this was that the method of getting here was extreme. First off the player would have to fly high into the air using a wingless plane called the do-do. This thing was so hard to fly, it was damn near impossible.

Once at a high altitude, the player had to fly over one of the tallest pieces of geometry in the game, and then continue on to the Town.

The town itself was small and was fully functional. However, some peices of "land" had no collision map attatched to them and additionally there was no traffic.

Check it out here

Additionally, another great one is the "you werent supposed to get here" easter egg, but thats not really a glitch, still, fun to find.

Finally, to wrap this rather lengthy post up, there are glitches that just put the player into an impossible situation, but because theyre so unbeleiveable, nobody cares:

Enough said really.

Well thats it for part one, see you in part two!

Suprising news from the world of GPU's, athe ATi brand is being scrapped. Thats right, no longer will ATi be something youll be referring to.

So whats actually going to happen then? Well, ATi will be renamed to... wait for it, AMD.

The reason for this is quite funny to be perfectly fair. According to ATi's parent company (coincidentally AMD), they ran a survey and found that AMD is a much more recognisable brand than ATi.

Huh? Since when. ATi and AMD are both recognisable brands arent they? Or is that just me?

Now for those of you who arent tech savvy, this strikes a few problems. Firstly, for ten years, ATi has been one of the two biggest GPU makes. Usually, when referring to graphics handling on a PC, its either ATi or nVidia. When it comes to CPU's however, its Intel and AMD.

So now AMD, will be a name for both GPU's and CPU's which strikes me as odd, as it is no longer one brand of product, its two.

In any case, in my opinion, there was no need for the change. In fact, according to the November 2010 issue of PC Gamer, the ATi GPU's were selling better than AMD CPU's.

Still, we'll no doubt be seeing the same quality of product as before, and thats something we can all be thankful for.

Check it out...

"Here to save the day! Game Experts are knowledgeable and skilled masters in at least one game and have proven this by unlocking at least 75% of the achievements available for it.
If you've ever got a question, a Game Expert's usually a good person to ask."

So not that great, but its awesome to have on the ol' profile :P

So anyway, over the next couple of weeks Ill be writing up some blogs I promised ages ago, unfortunately University takes priority at the moment. Expect a few the end of next week.

Thanks all!

I don't think even Valve can connect to themselves that quickly

Final Fantasy XI

Final Fantasy has been a long running favourite of mine. From the first to the 12th, ive owned and loved every single one of them... except one (two if you include X-2).

Final fantasy XI is probally one of the worst MMO's ive ever played and i was quite upset by that fact. Im not saying the game is bad period, because it still has some sort of fan base, however, in my opinion, it is bad, and i aim to explain why.

Firstly, lets talk registration. As we all may, or may not know, to play these kinds of MMO's, you need to register for an account. Most of the time you need to do this with a CD Key and a credit card for mainstream MMO's. This allows your account to be bound to a game and a subscription fee.

The process is simple, put in your name and address etc, but for this, I found it majorly confusing.

Okay, I purchased the game, and installed it. 8 Gigabytes, pretty standard stuff. Upon initiating the game, the PlayOnline pre-loader opened. This thing was awesome, genuinely. It looked very well presented and played a very relaxing soundtrack, which was a welcome change from most standard and often generic pre-loaders.

After about 2 minutes of updating the pre-loader, it restarted. I Initiated FF XI again which opened the new PlayOnline Pre-loader. Still looked the same but i presume most changes were for network tweaks and so on.

I was presented with two options. Either log in with an existing PlayOnline account, or alternatively, make a new one. Now, at this point i need to mention, Final Fantasy XI and PlayOnline are TWO SEPERATE programs and services, however they are both owned by Square Enix.

I started to make a new account and after the usual name, address and general details were asked, I was then prompted to enter a PlayOnline registration key.

I had no Idea what this was. I searched the net and most people didn't know either, they said it would be in the manual of the game. Well this was no use, as I had purchased the game from steam.

So, thinking this was a detail only needed on the client of the PlayOnline service, and not the web side, I set off to find a PlayOnline registration page on the net. None existed. The only PlayOnline site available was only accessable to current users of the service.

So, figuring I have a Square Enix account for my Final Fantasy XIV Beta, I could log into that and see about activating a Final Fantasy XI account on there manually, and perhaps that would give me a key. No chance, again.

The Square Enix account I have, although is an account nonetheless, isn't compatible with the Square Enix service...

Yeah.

I can only use it for the Beta of FF XIV which is daft as the details are registered as a Square user, non exclusive to anything.

Already frustrated I decided not to bother making a new one, as then I would have 2, I searched the Steam support forums some more. Sure enough there was only one thread that told me this:

The PlayOnline Registration key was the CD key.

Now before I continue, what If I wasn't tech savvy, what if i was a casual? I wouldn't know how to notice that, how to search for it. I trudged a good 30+ websites looking for an answer. Additionally, labelling the CD key as PlayOnline Registration key is ridiculous for Steam users and normal users alike. And to boot, the CD key isn't even immediately evident upon purchase of the game, the user must navigate to the game in steam, right click it and select view CD key.

Okay, so I inputted my CD key. Completed my account setup. I couldn't initially set up a user name, nor could I a email account. That's right, users of PlayOnline get a free email address (navazarian@pol.com if you wondered).

After the registration was completed, I was told my new username was... well, something like JQ23r56G9. Catchy isn't it. I could, however change this slightly afterwards to Navazarian, my internet handle, however that was only a cosmetic name that covered, but didn't replace, the original JQ23r56G9.

The whole experience post-registration on PlayOnline was thoroughly entertaining and genuinely a satisfactory experience, Id go as far to say, one of the best online services i've used.

Okay, so, after this I started Final Fantasy XI, but before I could, I had to register with Square Enix...

Thats right, If you can remember me commenting, I already have one, however this wasnt allowed into the main public Square Enix servers apparently. So, I created a new account with them. Again. Oh and just to add more fun, the new Square Enix account COULD NOT be registered to the same email address as the PlayOnline account created.

Even without the beta account worries, this process was still quite long.

Now lets talk content ID's. Content ID's can be explained like this. Imagine a regular MMO game account online. You register, usually with the key available on the back of the manual. Now when you go to your online account, it lists what you have registered. With Warcraft, it will have your name and then the expansions you have inserted retail keys for.

For me, Core, Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King cause im aweseome. Just as awesome as the "Account Deactivated" note next to my name as I cancelled my subscription last year. Anyway im getting sidetracked.

Content ID is basically the name given for a game. So lets compare, Warcraft: Core (Content ID), Burning Crusade (Content ID) and Wrath of the Lich King (Content ID).

Now, thats cool, each game has a content ID that needs to be joined to the account, and this process is done automatically when you set up your Square Enix account. The only problem? Each character also has an Content ID. So, by default you can only have one, before buying another.

Not bad enough for you? To set up more, you cant just go to the menu and make a new one, no, you need to log out and set one up in the account management, then go back to the game a couple of quid short and make a new character.

Okay, so, we have our account set up, lets play... well actually, no. Y'see the initial install of 8GB was only the core game, and not the 3 expansions the game is sold with. So, Ii started downloading the expansions. 10 hours later and the download finishes.

So I start playing and, oh boy! The game itself, was striking. Upon opening the game I was shocked at how bad everything looked. My monitor resolution is 1680 by 1050 so I didn't expect the game to look completely up-to-date as the game is relatively old.

However, textures stretch, there is no anti aliasing and the max resolution for 3D model resolution is 1024 x 768. The only way to up this is by going into the REGISTRY and manually editing the configurations there but the difference in quality is appalling, there practically is none and there's no options to change this or anything else in game.

So lets look at the game itself and try not to be sick. The game itself with its lore is awesome, i really got into it, however this was quickly overshadowed by the controls. Every main alphabetic key on the keyboard is "say" so i couldn't do anything. The mouse opens the menu, the mouse closes it, some buttons do more than others. The number pad controls the direction of movement, the mouse is overly sensitive (as it is set to a 1024 x 768 display) and casting spells is.... well, i still don't know how to do it, i think Esc does it. It takes 30 seconds to log out and 30 seconds to shut down.

In the 4 hours i played online, I completed 2 quests as it took me ages to find the quest givers and hand-ins as there are no visual clues or directions in the quest log.

Additionally, in the entire time of playing, I only saw 3 players and nobody used chat. There are no signposts to tell you where you are or where your going.

The area map is bad, is difficult to navigate. It isn't possible to open it and look at other areas.

And subscription prices for this? £8.99 per month. Enjoy.