The only serious flaw of the game is kind of a subjective one. There are some optional tutorial missions when the game starts, but it's not long before the player is thrust into the universe without much in the way of hints as to where they need to be and when. Wandering too far from home too early can result in repeated ass kicking. It's the usual penalty paid by open-ended games, and it makes for one of those infrequent modern cases where reading the manual is a must and easy mode is actually worth playing for a bit. For those who don't like being babysat this is hardly a flaw at all, of course.

With gameplay totaling in the neighborhood of 10 to 12 hours, Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is not exactly epic in length, but its intriguing and well-crafted story and setting will probably make it a favorite of science fiction fans. We can only hope that is does not take another six years for Funcom to make the next game; at my age I will have forgotten what all the loose ends were that I really wanted to see concluded.

The combat isn't easy, either. You can and almost certainly will die at various times. Even if your reflexes are up to the challenge, the lousy implementation fights dirty. The lowest blow is the insanely responsive nature of the combined mouse click. The controls are so hyper-sensitive that if you don't time your clicks absolutely perfectly, it'll register as a failure. At least, that's what I assume is the problem, though since I could never discern the difference between a pass or fail, it could just as easily be gnomes flipping a coin. In any case, it causes more than its fair share of grief. If you're thinking a quick keyboard re-mapping would solve this problem, think again, as the default configuration is permanent. Lucky DVC offers gamepad support to bypass this problem, right? Wrong. How on earth a game also available for PlayStation 2 and Xbox can not support gamepads on PC is a mystery not even a cryptographer could solve. Nevertheless, it's true, and for that reason alone, I would recommend buying a console version of the game if you own one of those systems.

A game that competently evokes the cosiness of watching Time Team of a Sunday evening, eating heavily buttered toast and safe in the knowledge that you've done all your homework - The Great Cow Race isn't a masterpiece, but it is a thoroughly amiable outing for he of the nubbin-nose. Opening with the beautifully self-referential line: "Well the last one was fun, but short..." in reference as much to last year's cow race as Out Of Boneville itself - what follows is a far more streamlined and engaging sophomore effort from the gang at Telltale.

The gameplay elements of Kingdom Elemental, which were playable, showed promise. The menus weren’t completely in place yet. Still, the units were available, and strategy played a large factor in gaining victories over the computer opponent. Five units were selectable and only one playing field was present in the alpha version. The unspoken task in the alpha version was to defend a housing unit that was under constant attack from waves of bad guys. Just about everything is moved, changed, or selected with the mouse.

Wurm Online will be a community-centric fantasy MMORPG fully developed in Java. Gameplay will be free at first, but when you wish to develop your character beyond basic skills, you're going to have to pay a monthly fee.

The world will have a real economy with a fixed pool of money and resources, and almost all items in the world will be created by other players. When the game is first launched, it will pretty much just only be a huge forest, and it will be up to the players to build the towns and create the items needed for both everyday use and more exotic practices.
Wurm Online will neither have levels nor hitpoints. Instead, you have a set of skills that define your character, and a list of any unhealed wounds the character has.

Gameplay is expected to be very down to earth and community-based for most players, with each town serving as a small community. Towns will also remain safe as long as the computer controlled guards are alive. You won't be able to attack other players or perform any other illegal activity inside the town without first killing all the guards. Outside the towns, however, you can do anything you want, but performing illegal activities will lower your status in the nearby villages.

GS: We understand that no matter which character you choose to play as, the other four characters will be available to join you in the game as party members. How different will the play experience be if players select different characters--will the story play out differently? Will players visit only certain areas and not others?

DS: Our story brings five diverse characters together into a fairly complex overall epic, taking them all over the land, accomplishing seemingly unrelated adventures before finally seeing it all resolve into the climax of the game where they act to save the entire land in a unique fashion.

Steven-Elliot Altman, best-selling author and Hollywood screenwriter, is the Lead Writer on 9Dragons, the first authentic martial arts massively multiplayer online game. Think of the world of Hero, House of the Flying Daggers, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Jackie Chan's classic Drunken Master. He wrote in to give us a taste for the gameplay.

At this point I hope you are asking yourself, "When will he get to the multiplayer part of the review." That, my friends is the sad part of Auto Assault. Most of my time in the Auto Assault universe was spent solo. As a matter of fact, I cannot understand why this game is an MMO. True, some of the higher level missions require parties to complete, but, along the way, you can accomplish most objectives by yourself. There is just no motivation to get to know other players, nor is the LFG interface all that useful. I found it rather difficult to get anyone engaged in a conversation any of the time I played the game.

Dreamfall grabs you from the opening cinematic with its fantastic story, but leaves much to be desired when it comes to actual gameplay. When you are finally allowed to actually do something is basically consists of walking around gorgeous 3D environments waiting for a blue box to appear indicating you can look, interact, or pick-up and object.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Ever played an online game like "World of Warcraft" or "EverQuest" and wished the expressions on your avatar's face looked more realistic or that it was easier to communicate with other players?

If so, then a team of researchers from the famed Palo Alto Research Center might be your heroes.

The PARC team--Bob Moore, Nicolas Ducheneaut and Eric Nickell, plus Stanford's Nick Yee--have spent the better part of three years studying the social dimensions of so-called massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) to better understand the design challenges behind creating satisfying face-to-face avatar and other interactions in such environments.

Beltion: Beyond Ritual in a nonlinear third-person view Action/RPG game with the branching system of complementary quests. The game is being developed for PC platform only.

The game is oriented on audience of 13-18 and older. The game should be specially attractive to the fans of medieval fantasy setting due to original art style concept combined with accustomed genre and setting canons.

We don’t use any trademarks or other property that should be licensed.

USP – unique selling points

• Literary and artistic constituents of the game world of our own design
• Non-traditional interpretation of artistic genre and setting canons
• Four independent systems of combat interaction, with possibility of combination
• Original main character: a necromancer priest
• A role-playing system of own design
• Original stylization of characters, weapons, equipment and locations
• Unique character development system using four types of human personality – sanguine, choleric, melancholic and phlegmatic, that allows the player to act in a most comfortable way
• Different solutions for problems – by communication, combat or magic
• More than three dozens of weapon types – swords, sabers, axes, hammers, clubs, halberds, spears, numerous crossbows. All variations with different combat specifications
• Wide range of Death Magic spells, including the variety of undead summoning
• Possibility of covert enemy liquidation in “stealth” type actions
• Different endings dependant on the manner of play

Approximate playing time is about 60 hours

Game description

The player is completely free to choose what to do in the game world. He can fight, trade, communicate with the Beltion inhabitants, accomplish quests given by them, develop his own character, fulfill different rituals of Gods and Powers who inhabit the game world.

The player will be able to visit countries and cities of Beltion continent, meet different characters of several races, gather interesting information about their everyday life by reading books, taking part in conversations, watching ingame movies. The persons player cam meet differ not only by racial belonging, but also by social levels, from high-ranking officials and rulers to beggars, vagabonds and rogues. Sometimes a clever dialogue will gain him more than a fight. Due to the possibility of trade, the player is able to sell items he gathered to buy new armour, weapons, magic items and ritual objects.

Very cool stuff going on now. I'm completing the game loop. No, not the programmy thingy - the other thingy. The game loop in the sense of a completed game. The game loop in the sense of being able to save your game state and reload. Where you pick your save game - which in this case, is very cool because of the interface design. You pick your save game and your little avatar runs over to it. Kinda cool and fun loving. It's all that and a bag of chips.

Chapter Gift: Our automatic gift to you for logging in to download "Chapter 1: The Corellian Captives," will be a beautiful new painting to decorate your in-game home or building.

The painting you receive will be one of a series of three that is randomly chosen; each one a humorous depiction of a popular Star Wars Galaxies creature.

Welcome to the latest issue of The Green Robe Gazette, a periodic report of the events and happenings brought to you by the green-robed Guides of EQ2. The Gazette will bring you reports of past events, news of upcoming events and any information regarding the Guide Program and how it affects the world of Norrath.

The events listed below do not (by any means) comprise all of the events that are happening across the servers. They just a sampling of what's going on (Translation: "We have screenshots of these events so we'll post them"). Thanks for reading.

After we spoke about the architecture change some time ago, you raised the issue of the existence of a same name on several servers. For instance, what would happen if two characters having the same name, one from Leanon and the other from Aniro, met in a Ring scenario?

We thought about a viable solution, to allow you to keep your name, and yet being able to know who's who (in mails, /tell, contact list, System Info window and R² scenario). I explain below what we have in mind.

Note: this system should be effective with the Ring patch, not the upcoming 4-days patch.

Characters' Names & the Multishard Architecture - Detailed document

Luxons Earn Much-Needed Victories to Halt the Kurzicks' Push Toward Cavalon

The war between the Luxons and Kurzicks wages on, and neither side has much to show for it. Like tolling bells, success seems to swing from side to side, keeping this brutal war at a seemingly endless stalemate.

The front is just now shifting toward Saltspray Beach—the borderland between the Kurzick and Luxon nations. In recent days, Kurzick forces pushed the Luxons past the Harvest Temple. The Luxon response to the Kurzick occupation was swift and relentless, finding the weaknesses in the Kurzick strategy and exploiting them.

Have you visited the Middle-earth section of our website lately? You definitely should today, because we've updated most of our Creature pages with actual models! Take a look at how closely our production artists captured the vision of the original concept art for creatures like the Rogmul, the Gorthorog, the Dark-water, and others you'll encounter when adventuring in Middle-earth.

We're happy to announce the opening of two new Oceanic realms: Aman'Thul a PvE realm, and Barthilas, a PvP realm. These realms will go live tonight at 11:59 PM PDT, June 8th, placing these realms live at approximately 4:59 PM GMT+10, June 9th. This will allow our Oceanic players to begin creating characters at a time comfortable for them. These two new realms will offer our Oceanic players, new and old alike, fresh beginnings in Azeroth!

GamerDad: You are viewed as a milestone success in independent gaming. What would you like to see kids get out of gaming in the future that they are not getting from it today?

Jeff Vogel: I think games are a marvelous leisure activity. I think that children, like every other human, deserve leisure. I think games today are just fine.

Except for one thing I'd like to add. I think that massively multiplayer online role-playing games are some of the most marvelous educational games ever made. I think the way they teach children to type, communicate, and work as a team is truly marvelous.