EverQuest II is a second generation massive multiplayer online role-playing game that takes place in the medieval fantasy setting of Norrath. Developed by Sony Online Entertainment, the game shipped on November 8, 2004, roughly at the same time as its World of Warcraft arch nemesis. Compared to the original Everquest game, it features greatly improved graphics, gameplay and the much needed NPC voiceovers. You can expect a heavy weight franchise, releasing a beautiful and detailed game appealing first and foremost to the hardcore role player.

Story

<-250x250 Square - left->Everquest II takes us to an extended version of Norrath, in the Age of Destiny, 500 years after the events of the original title took place. The game world has been seriously affected by several cataclysms: the planes have closed, the Gods left, and the moon Luclin has been destroyed, raining down across the vast reaches of Norrath. Little remained of the old order, in places now accessible only by the Shattered Lands. Players initially join one of the two tutorial areas, The Queen's Colony or The Outpost of the Overlord, and subsequently move to Queynos (the good aligned city) or Freeport (the evil aligned city). The rest of the once majestic strongholds of civilization are either inaccessible or outright wiped off the face of the world, following the shattering.

Gameplay

Generous character customization options are the key to swaying players into enjoying the game from the start. Sixteen races are waiting for you to fully unlock their capabilities within twenty four more classes to choose from. Some combinations are not allowed, with the seemingly natural limitation that some characters, like Dark Elves for instance, are always inclined to do evil deeds, therefore always start in the city of Freeport, The Heart of Darkness. Dark Elves can’t be Paladins just as the good natured Frogloks can’t be assassins. There are no essential gameplay differences between alignments, and the starting map areas are basicly identical. Qeynos and Freeport are much larger than they were in the original Everquest and they play an important role in player gameplay. Each race has its own special section of the cities. Players from one city are not welcome in the other city unless they choose to betray their citadel via the Betrayal Quest line. Needless to say, the character’s physical aspect supports extensive customisation options, guaranteed to keep satisfied even the most demanding players.

Characters can choose a normal Player Versus Environment server (PvE), Role Playing server (RP) or a Player Versus Player (PvP) realm to better suit their interests. Regardless of choice, the visited areas will always have the same consistency, the main difference being felt on a social level. It must be noted that the PvP rule set and subsequent servers are a fresh addition to Everquest 2, coming to fruition with the Kingdom of the Sky expansion. Most content in the world of Norrath was designed to be unveiled through team efforts, but developers recently balanced the game to better reward solo play. For the first part of the game solo play will be the basic way to discover the various game mechanics.

The dark forest of the isle will welcome you into its secrets. Following the main quest line there will be many foes to be slain, and rich rewards await the persistent gamer. Experience leads to level advancement which in turn provides the much needed skills. You don’t have to buy skills in Everquest from trainers. You simply receive them upon leveling up. Eventually you’ll reach level 20, an important landmark in the game’s evolution. From now on advancement points can be acquired and spent upon great new abilities. The system pretty much resembles the talent system, as a skill tree with four specialisation branches is available for each of the classes in Everquest II. These advancement options truly make the difference regarding character build-up, since one can further enhance existing skills to greater effect and devise new fighting techniques. Should you want to try a different setup, you can always respec for an increasingly costly fee.

There are two mild consequences to dying: an experience debt and a hit in item durability. Although a player doesn't lose any experience earned, the debt must be paid back with experience earned going forward. The experience debt is reduced when a player gains new experience, as part of it goes toward repaying debt while the other part continues to advance a character's level. Speaking of levels, SOE introduced the concept of micro level ups, when a character gets partial level-ups, from combat advancement, in terms of health and power boost.

Concept

Stats and dependencies will keep you busy for a long time wondering which path is best suited for you current goals. Strength increases melee damage and how much you can carry, agility improves the chance to dodge a melee attack, stamina gives hit points, intelligence increases spell damage and maximum power (mana) and wisdom deal with spell resistance. Primary stats increase with levels, by a standard amount depending on class. Beside the governing attributes we have attack and run speed, melee attack power, avoidance, and mitigation - a damage resistance statistic. As well as spell resistances, they can be increased either by constantly using their appropriate skills of with new and more powerful items.

Although there are numerous statistics and other vibrant tidbits to make use of, you won’t waste any time learning the interface while playing Everquest II. There are way too many menus around but you can access them from the same option panel, making it very easy to handle. All you need to remember is using your combat skills, in order to keep up the damage output. The rest just comes along.

Quests usually involve killing a particular number of certain monsters, yet there is some deeper continuity to the storyline. While helping NPCs quests will gradually reveal secondary objectives required in order to advance. Although they’re usually self explanatory, it's a nice touch, immersion wise. Players can gather area specific items to complete collections throughout the game. While it sometime takes a long time to get all the parts together, rewards are well worth it, consisting in gold, items and even advancement points.

Everquest II developers took great care in keeping elements that made the original game such a popular title and live events carry on that legacy. Beside the official expansions and adventure packs that require a purchase fee, Sony Online Entertainment often enough releases patches targeting game balancing issues and content updates. Each on these send the Everquest II story one step forward, heralding game events that forevermore change gameplay. Great threats arise, malicious masterminds bring their plots to fruition and it’s up to every fighting soul of Norrath to stand up to them. Additional raid bosses are usually the target of new high end content updates as well as an ever increasing number of game items to further everyone’s dreams fat loot and glory.

Video

The engine used with Everquest II appears to be exceedingly versatile, although the general look suffers from texture quality. I can’t stress enough how good playing characters look, and by extension most humanoid NPCs. Armors and weapons are covered in great detail as well as model physics. I had the time of my life while browsing through the 99 different emotes. Incredibly accurate gestures and movement made me wonder on which side of the monitor reality lies. Overall the game looks good, but landscapes could have turned out better in terms of detail. This is the curse of most MMORPGs, to sacrifice part of the graphics for the game to efficiently work on older computer systems.

Sound

The lack of character voice, that was a problem in the original Everquest title, is no longer an issue in this second installment. Professional voice acting beautifully complements orchestral music for a high quality sound experience. I only regret not having unique voice emotes for playing characters. The ambiance sounds are realistic enough. Calm and confidence lie therein and you’ll often enough find something is missing after turning off the computer. Music has a certain degree of finesse, like a shady cove full of promise on a sunny day, mysterious and bewitching. It reminds me of the Morrowind soundtrack, fairly complex but relaxing.

Multiplayer

Adventure areas are usually of medium size therefore problems often arise when several players are hunting for the same creature type. It usually happens while questing, since the respawn rates do not conveniently cover for three or more players. Some frustration is to be expected due to overcrowding. Unfortunately this kind of map layout is very vulnerable to intervention by farming bots and power leveling third party programs. Even in starter areas one can see on occasion three or four players being away from keyboard, automatically following the leader. They share group experience although just one player is doing the active fighting.

Mentoring is a concept native to the Everquest franchise and it concerns player team balance. To avoid power leveling by higher level, more powerful characters, the game restricts experience awards to certain differences between party members’ and monster level. Mentoring partially breaks this rule as you can play along with your lower level friends and still be able to guide them through the game faster. Everquest 2 is an end-game oriented title, with great achievement value to be obtained precisely at top level. It is here guild team play and coordination shines, within the 24 man raids. Since a good deal of content is not instanced, PvP battles usually ensue while tackling a raid boss, but team challenges start even as low as level 22.

Conclusion

Sony Online Entertainment’s put up together an experienced team and kept the franchise alive with three adventure packs and four expansions, starting with Desert of Flames, Kingdom of Sky, Echoes of Faydwer, and finally Rise of Kunark. It’s substantial amount of content if we take into consideration it was released in just three short years since the original Everquest 2 launch. Developers decided to stop releasing adventure packs, small content additions that were released for lower fees, and instead focus on free content, while expansions make up for the greater gameplay changes. The official site is thoroughly updated with the new ideas and you can find out more about the fate of Norrath in just a few clicks.

Diner Dash: Hometown Hero is the fourth part of the series, following Diner Dash (2003), Diner Dash: Restaurant Rescue (2006), and Diner Dash: Flo on the go (2006).
The game is developed and published by PlayFirst, for Mac OS X and Windows platforms.

<-180x150 Small Rectangle - left->In the first part, which I also played and enjoyed a lot, Flo is a stockbroker who quits her job to run her own restaurant with a small starting budget.
Diner Dash is created as a strategy game where Flo has to take care of her business and improve her restaurant.
You as the player will have to seat the customers and guide her to serve them, within a time limit.
The steps are simple: seat the group of customers to a free desk with as many seats as the number of the people in this group, wait, then take the order, wait again for the food to be done and bring it back to them.

Take the dishes, then the money (if you are lucky you could get also tips) and the job is done.
During levels, the game becomes faster, more clients are coming in the same time and you have to move very fast in order to satisfy them all.
If at the end of a level you didn’t raise enough money you will have to replay.
The money you are raising will be used for restaurant improvements, and after a while for buying three more restaurants.

In Diner Dash 2, Flo is helping Darla to pay back the money to Mr. Big, the greedy landlord, who wants to destroy Darla’s Café.
This part features five new restaurants, four new customer types, new power-ups and seating challenges, and several decor upgrades.

In Flo on the go, she and Darla are the two co-owners of a restaurant and are going in a vacation, but when boarding the ship, Flo’s suitcase falls into the sea.
Later, at the ship’s restaurant, a waiter drops his tray and Flo catches it, together with the eyes of the manager. He asks her to work for the ship’s crew and he’ll offer her a refund for the lost tickets and the normal payment for the job.
With the money, Flo will buy some nice clothes from the ship’s store.
The new features here are: five new restaurants, nine customer types, all-new Flo's Closet, 25 plus new decor upgrades, and hundreds of outfit choices.
The third part brings the Secret Level, which will be opened only if you become Expert in all the levels of a carrier cruise.
Secret levels are: Date Night, Girl's Night Out, Business Lunch, Summer Camp and Everybody to the Limit.

Now let’s take a look at the last part, Diner Dash: Hometown Hero, which I hope to manage to play soon, because the demo doesn’t want to start, showing me this message since two hours ago: “Your game will continue after the ad has finished playing.”
We will see Flo this time returning to her hometown, where she wants to visit her grandmother Florence.
Unfortunately, she discovers that the town has become a ghost town.
She will again use her culinary skills to restore the town, improving the restaurants.
This time, you will have the power to customize your own waiter avatar’s clothes and accessories, and create your own restaurants for playing or for uploading to DinerDash.com.
Other players can download your creations to play with.

As a fan of this game I am glad that now I can play Diner Dash online and compete or co-work with other players, in the new multiplayer mode.
Another new feature is the meta-transaction, meaning that I can pay small fees to download additional clothing for my avatar or scenery for the restaurant, or if I want, whole new restaurants.

Now, at the end, i won't recommend you to download the demo, but to play an older part and then buy directly this last one from here, for just $19.95.

<-125x125 Button - right->Everyone was overjoyed last year during the Barcelona X06 event, when word was out that Microsoft planned a real time strategy game based on the Halo franchise. Halo Wars was to be developed at Ensemble Studios, which implied toning down of current projects, mainly Age of Empires related work. The first expansion was released one month later introducing Age of Empires III: The War Chiefs, but it wasn’t until May this year that Microsoft said they will not discontinue work on the beloved fantasy franchise. Just days ago Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties went gold, meaning the game is finished and the product ready to be sent to the presses.

Maybe that would explain why Ensemble Studios would acknowledge and require third party involvement, namely Rise of Legends and Rise of Nations developer Big Huge Games. You can expect some interlacing within the next title as I’m confident it was a unique experience working within another developer's universe.

The Asian Dynasties expands the Age of Empires III world into the East, featuring the introduction of three playable Asian civilizations: the Chinese, Japanese, and Indians. The New winning conditions add to game depth and raise its replay value. Extra trade options will grant faster access to the much needed resources and encourage you to set up economical relations with far away kingdoms. The game went back to its roots, through random map styles, along with a rework of several Asia-based maps from previous Age of Empires games.

The developers remembered one of your favorite gameplay element from Age of Empires II, thus you can witness the return of Wonders. Each civilization has five wonder type buildings, representative of your empire’s glory, providing essential combat boosts along with trading and healing improvements. Unlike previous attempts, your trade routes won't have to be built. Instead you'll have to conquer the Silk Road yourself, by taking over outposts placed all over the map and controlled by raiders.

Age of Empires III: The Asian Dynasties is ready for the October 23rd release. You still need the original title to play the expansion, rated Teen and retailed for $29.99.

European Street Racing is a new fully 3D racing simulator developed by Xider Games and has been released on September 21st, 2007. You can test your driving skills with some of the best real life racing models out there, and take a ride on the streets of Europe without moving an inch from the comfort of your gaming rig. Instead of virtual cities, you’ll get to see Moscow, Warsaw, London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin and Hamburg in their street splendor. I find this change refreshing as a right step in the direction of virtual tourism.

The game prompts you to create a profile and buy a street car on your 30000$ budget. Off to the garage, you’ll be able to buy more starting equipment and you’ll return here again and again each time you taste sweet victory. It’s time to enjoy the spoils and upgrade your car. Every time you win a race, cash will be gained, which will undoubtedly go into new engines, better steering gear, booster oil and more. In the garage you can get a paint job at any time, so there shouldn’t be a problem with the starting color of your car. I like the way developers created an intuitive interface to vehicle tweaking. You can notice the effect of your next engine upgrade with just one click. Other racing games display complex customization features when it comes to tweaking your car for better acceleration over maximum speed, or steering versus suspension. European Street Racing features a simple system, adding to the casual factor, so you just get in and play right away, arcade style. Sixteen models await as you’ll eventually unlock them all by having enough money to buy them. Since you can sell your car at any given time and start upgrading a new one, there isn’t any money lost in the process.

Although your car is pretty resilient to shocks, unlike the NPC cars will burst into a thousand pieces even on the slightest touch, you might want to avoid hitting walls. The cosmetic change in your car in obvious during a race, as you window glass will crack; the top will come off, along with the front and back parts. It’s still not enough to slow you down as I haven’t seen any major performance changes in my car, even after kissing a wall.

Opponents aren’t that impressive in the normal mode and will occasionally bump into street cars that aren’t competing, out of sheer stupidity. Yes, we do have bystanders that populate the roads on European Street Racing, which sometimes start hilarious events. Picture this for example. I was just starting to enjoy the game as the first race features a quick ride in the streets of London. European Street Racing tried to recreate the ambience or real European capitals instead of fictional cities with strange architecture. The race started and I was trying my best to keep up the pace with the other five speed balls when … I noticed everyone was driving on the right side. Sure, nothing unusual about this, until I realized cars usually drive on the left side of the road in England and my bad habit of driving on the right only caused massive crashes with neutral cars. Damn, it’s going to be harder than I expected, I thought. But it all went fine afterwards, since opponents shared my confusion just the same.

Once you qualified for the next race, the track you just completed will be unlocked for the Ghost Race mode. It would have been great to drive against yourself and observe your previous moves to correct any mistakes. The Ghost Mode is not an improved spectator mode where you race against yourself; instead, it lets you solo race the track to fix any shortcomings. If that last curve was giving you a hard time, you can now adjust your speed in advance and see how much of a difference it makes altogether. A standard feature in most racing games, this addition will help you master the track in no time, being able to think about a perfect theory race and how each turn should be, and then translating it into practice.

I really enjoyed the cool music in European Street Racing, both exhilarating and purposeful, the right mix to get the blood pumping and you wanting to go faster. The great informational highway waits, once you’ve trained enough. European Street Racing can be played either through LAN or directly on the official server through an internet connection. You can join or host games that support up to six players and race them on any given map.

Shortly before the September 21^st release, there was a series of promotional stunts on Max Power which could get you a spot in the next game. Winners V6NOS and Rebecca got themselves into the game as a nifty car owner and a street racing hottie. You can take a sneak peek and hopefully find then by playing the European Street Racing demo.

Starting this month, you will have the occasion to take the role of a ghost wrapped in a sheet and haunt an old factory searching for the meaning of the afterlife.

Ghost in the Sheet is point-and-click comic style adventure game designed for PC, developed by CBE, which will lead you in a mysterious place where after receiving specific orders from the unpleasant astral boss, you’ll have to discover what made the old, abandoned factory, called Sector Omega, to stop functioning.




<-234x60 Half Banner - right->After you died, you spirit began to move freely receiving supernatural powers, which you will discover one by one.
You first power that you will be aware of is Telekinesis, the ability of moving objects or substances with the power of mind.
After that, comes your ghost-specific scary sounds ability.



Try Synergy, the publisher, promises a captivating gameplay with a black comedy-style plot, surrounded by sound effects to create an engaging atmosphere.
The high-resolution graphics and detailed environments will immerse you in the nonlinear gameplay, where 10 non- player characters will reveal the hints for puzzles, providing the intriguing back-story.



Similar like in RPGs, you will progress by learning how to use your new paranormal skills in your next adventure, where you’ll discover other abilities and so on.



Hilarious minigames integrated into the gameplay will become the spices in Ghost in the Sheet; while there will be no bothering mazes, slider puzzles or timed sequences.