Witcher 2 Screen Shots

I've been slowly playing my way through The Witcher 2, So I thought I'd share my three best screen shots so far. If you haven't picked up The Witcher 2 yet then your missing out on an absolutely incredible game! For me its among the greatest RPGs of all time, right up there with BG2 and FF7.



Dragon Age: Origins patch 1.05 On It's Way

A few days ago Bioware announced that it's in the early sages of a new patch for the much troubled fantasy RPG. Origins has suffered from bugs and glitches since it's release in November 2009 and despite numerous patches for both the PC and Console versions there are still game breaking bugs in need of fixing. So yet again Bioware customers wait patiently for some much delayed bug squishing. 


I purchased Origins on release day and ever since have had to scour the Bioware tech support forums for answers. Many gamers complaints ranged from CTDs, memory leaks, increasingly long loading times, quest bugs, item bugs, authorization issues and many more. I watched (and endured) the numerous patch releases that at times caused more new issues then fixes, and to make it worse you needed to have an updated game to play the expansion and later the many DLC additions. Minimal community interaction from Bioware, and useless EA tech support didn't help ether, players felt left in the dark and ripped off. I witnessed (and yes added to) the many frustrated and angry voices on the Bioware forums. So many players lost their respect for Bioware, me included despite being a long time fan, the worst gaming experience I have ever had has changed that for good.


Bioware's recent track record of dodgy Origins patches leaves me sceptical as to weather or not this new patch will be a successes or not. Unfortunately their still in the hunting and gathering stage. ie: Still making a list of bugs to fix, so the new patch is a long way off yet.


It would seem the saga continues in Dragon Age 2 with the last patch fixing over 100 bugs and another Dragon Age 2 patch on it's way to fix many more. I haven't played Dragon Age 2 mainly due to the Dragon Age: Origins headaches I suffered but looking at the Dragon Age 2 tech forums and seeing similar game breaking bugs that I and many others experienced with Origins makes me very happy I didn't wast my money for a second time.


Now we wait to see if Bioware can redeem themselves. Better late then never right?


Need a link to the Bioware forum about the new patch? Click here

How to get the Lightning Stave in DoW2

When Dawn of War 2 Retribution was released not too long ago I eagerly jumped back into The Last Stand mode to check out the new war gear that can be unlocked via achievements. It's honestly the first time I have ever cared about achievements in my life and was particularly interested to see what new toys of war the Farseer can unlock. And I must say the new war gear is awesome! The two new items work perfectly together the easiest to unlock is the new armour giving the Farseer a respectable amount of protection and a very nice 0.5 buff to energy regeneration. To complement the armours energy buff the Lightning Staff adds the lightning runes trait that will reduce energy costs of spells so you can fire off those eldritch storms more often! Oh plus the staff has a ranged attack with knock down and it dose decent damage in melee too.


So how do you get this uber killy staff? Well I can tell how I managed to get it and it was not particularly easy. You need to reach a points multiplier of x275. I managed to do this only with the help of two other good players with high level characters. In the Bloodied coliseum map one team mate and I guarded a capture point each while the remaining player jumped around the map helping us or making kills as fast as possible. You'll need to keep the capture points under your control while avoiding any team members becoming incapacitated until about wave 11 to have a chance at scoring your new weapon.


Just a thought, if your having trouble racking up the 75 revives to get the armour I recommend using the teleport rune to warp your incapacitated team members to a safe location then revive them, you'll save the day and get plenty of thanks and in no time have new war gear!


Below is my favourite war gear combo with the new items, built to survive and dish out the pain from a distance or extract team members to a safe location.


Weapon: Lightning Stave
Armour: Mantle of Malan'tai
Accessories: Rune of Warding, Rune of the Warp, Runes of War
Commander Item: Spirit Stone of Eldritch Might



Amnesia: The Dark Decent Review

You awake lying on a cold stone floor with absolutely no memory of your past, finding yourself trapped within in a dark castle as a thunder storm rages outside, your only clue to your predicament is a small trail of pink liquid drops upon the stone floor leading deeper into the unknown....


That's what your presented with when starting a new game of Amnesia: The Dark Decent and from that point onwards you'll be leading your character Daniel on a frightening quest through Castle Brennenburg. Amnesia: The Dark Decent is a survival horror game with light puzzle solving, developed and published by Frictional Games.


There are plenty of questions right from the beginning regarding the story but answers soon start filtering through as you collect notes and diary entries detailing the interesting back story leading up to your current situation. For those that don't like reading rest assured many of notes are fully voiced. Amnesia also dose a brilliant job of slowly introducing the player to new aspects of game play in the early stages, so it's easy to pick up even if your not a veteran of adventure horror games.


The game plays in first person with no 3rd person cut scenes which is just one way the game keeps players immersed in it's atmosphere. Talking about atmosphere, this is where Amnesia shines it keeps you on edge at all times. It's freaky just to walk around this castle and this is before creatures try to eat your brains out. When a shambling mutilated zombie dose emerge from the darkness hell bent on ripping your limbs off all you can do is run like a little girl and hide, preferably in the nearest wardrobe. Yep, that's right you have no weapons at all. Surprisingly that's one of the best things about Amnesia you can't play the warrior with guns blazing, you just got to find a way to survive the nightmare and that adds a lot to the fear factor. You wont find many "BOO" moments that other games rely on to scare players, instead your treated to a relentlessly haunting atmosphere.







The balance between light and dark in Amnesia has been done remarkably well. From a well lit part of the room it's very hard to see anything in a dark area, but moving into the darkness and your eyes quickly adjusts allowing you to search dark places for items. But remaining in the dark for too long comes with it's own dangers. There's an entity in the darkness that eats away at Daniel's sanity the longer you stay there, and before long your vision starts warping you hear freaky sounds and eventually start seeing bugs crawling around your vision, this gets especially intense when hiding in the dark from zombie creatures.


Luckily you will have a lantern to light your way to ward off the darkness but doing so will use up your reserves of lantern oil so it's good to use tinderbox's when staying in one place as they can be used to light up a candle or touch as you search a room. Rummaging around a room is not as boring as it might seem, every action is preformed by emulating a movement with the mouse. To open a draw you need to click and "pull" to close the draw you click and "push". Same goes for doors allowing you to open a door just a little bit to see what's in the next room.


It's not all hide and seek some parts of the game have you on the run in a frightening chase sequence or in a room solving a puzzle. The thing I like most about Amnesia's puzzles is that everything you need to complete the puzzle is within that area or room. The puzzles also very from using a rock to dislodge or smash something to picking up gears and putting a machine back into working order. None of the puzzles are overly hard to accomplish but their variety and inventiveness make them enjoyable. In some cases you also need to combine items within your inventory before they can be used to solve puzzles.


The game highly recommends you to check your monitors gamma, play in the dark and with headphones. Let me add to this, this game is best played later at night when the house is quiet and there's nobody to disturb you. I say this because to play this game is to lose yourself in the atmosphere.


From the eerie ambient sound effects of foot steps and scratching bugs to heart pumping music Amnesia doesn't lack in music department at all. There are times when the mere sound of a zombies howl is all that it takes for you to be heading for the nearest hiding spot.


Since it's arrival in September 2010Amnesia: The Dark Decent has been a very successful indie game taking full advantage of the online PC market selling about 200,000 units so far. Frictional games recently stated "The sales that we have had (and are having) are more than enough to motivate developing a game with the PC as the main (and even only) platform. Based on what we have seen, the online PC market is just getting bigger and bigger, and we are convinced we are far from the end of this growth. We think that other developers that consider making their game exclusive to a console might want to think again."


Overall Amnesia: The Dark Decent is a great game, only lacking a little in the graphics department, but the visuals do the job just fine thanks to good lighting. Not much incentive to replay but for it's low price tag this game is awesome value for money. This is a must have for any gamer into horror, but just as good if your looking for something a little different outside your comfort zone. In fact it's worth playing just for the experience based gameplay.


PC Gamer Guy Score 9/10


Need a Link? http://www.amnesiagame.com/#main



Violent Video Game Debate Is On Again!

On the 10th of December we're ether going to have Australian gamers singing joyously down the street on their way to the local video game shop or they'll be picking up their assault rifles and war axes to go on a bloody murderous rampage. (or so some would seem to think we gamers would do.) So why singing or rampaging you might ask? Well the Committee of Attorneys-general meeting in Canberra will be taking place and having a big talkfest to decide if an R18+ rating for video games is to be introduced in this country or not, potentially putting the gaming industry on par with the movie industry and giving adult gamers the level of choice they should have.


Feed back the government has received from the public shows that the vast (I'm talking vast!) majority support an R18+ with 98.2% Vs those opposed at 1.8%  So it's obvious what the public wants. They wont the right to access entertainment that they are entitled to, and restrict those that are too young for that content. As it stands now some games that should be R18+ are MA15+ here in Australia and those that don't get squished into the MA15+ category are simply banned, forcing the more disgruntled gamers to pirate the banned game. None of that is any good for the industry or minors as it blocks out part of the Aussie market, gives incentive to pirate banned games and potentially gives minors access to what should have been a R18+ game.


Opposition to violent Video games mostly stems from people that have never been a gamer and don't understand the industry or the complete nature of the entertainment and only focus on what they personally don't like about video games. Or they are looking to find a scapegoat for societies bigger problems, and the gaming industry is an easy target because it's a young industry that just so happens to be expanding into a more mature market.


In my opinion you can't blame violence on video games, when there was worse violence before games. If someone commits a violent crime it's because there's something wrong with them or they had lousy parents that never showed them the meaning of respect and common decency, not because they played one or two video games. All the dedicated gamers I have ever known are non-violent people, and I for one never feel more violent after playing a video game, in fact I'm more relaxed. I do however support preventing graphic violent content to minors and think that a R18+ classification is a step in the right direction, that should be followed by better and more available information to parents from both government and the gaming industry.


On the 10th of December we'll see if people power is victorious, until then Aussie gamers will have to be content with restrictions imposed upon us.


Need a Link? http://www.ag.gov.au/gamesclassification

Rumor has it......

So rumor has it that Bethesda's current project in development is the next Elder Scrolls game and will be a direct sequel to Oblivion. The timing makes sense to me as Oblivion was released way back in 2006, but a sequel? I'm not so sure about that part but as long as the player starts with a new character and is in some way imprisoned to begin with, then this will be like the Elder Scrolls we all know and love.


Another part to this rumour is the question: will it be an MMO? I for one hope not, although the Elder Scrolls universe is expansive and could fit right into the mmo genre it would seem from what I'm reading on forums the fans don't wont an mmo conversion. With the mmo market getting crowded and more big titles to come releasing an Elder Scrolls game as an unwonted mmo would be a bad move for Bethesda.


What we do know for sure is that Bethesda has built a new graphics engine for this rather then using id's Tech 5 engine. This would mean we can expect Elder Scrolls 5 will not likely look as good as Rage but will in Bethesda tradition have a very open world environment as opposed to Rage's semi open world environment. Apparently the game is also far into development, Bethesda have said that the time between official announcement to release date will be one of the shortest for the company. 


Personally I'm looking forward to this assuming it's not an mmo, and hopefully the widely disliked enemy scaling will be replaced by something more akin to what's found in Risen where some locations in game are occupied by creatures that are too tough for a low level character. I'd also like to see Bethesda take a leaf out of Mount & Blade when it comes to horse combat. Any mounted combat would be nice!

Fallout New Vegas: How to level up a good character

This is more for those that are new to the wastlands but if your a Fallout veteran feel free to read on if your looking for a few good tips.


To survive the wastlands your going to need some awesome skills. But what skills are best you ask? Well, I'm going to run through some of the choices you can make so it's easier to survive the wastland as you level up.


Lets start with S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Your S.P.E.C.I.A.L attributes (Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, Luck) governs your skills. At the start of the game you only have five points to distribute so choose wisely. This is what you can do now that will help make the game easier and more fun throughout. Put at least one point in strength to increase the total weight you can carry. (the more you can carry the more guns and loot you can stock up on) Intelligence might seem like a boring attribute to put points into but I recommend at least 2 points here as the more intelligence you have the more points you get to spend on skills at each level up. Next I recommend one point in endurance and one in agility, to boost your health total and ability to lock pick and sneak.


Next up is skills, you get the chance to tag three skills during level creation this will significantly boost the chosen skills so it's good to pick the skills you most wont to build up. You'll wont to choose skills that are most useful, starting with the Repair skill. Weapons degrade with use and will need parts from another of its type to be fixed up, this will improve the weapons damage and prevent it from jamming. You will be repairing weapons and armour throughout the entire game so it pays to be good at it. The second skill I recommend is Lockpick as people are always trying to hide good stuff behind locked doors and in safes. If you plan on playing the good guy you can relax there are plenty of things/places to break into that will not result in bad karma. And probably most importantly your going to need to be skilled up with some type of weapons, for this you can't go wrong with Guns, this includes ballistic weapons such as rifles, submachine guns, shotguns and revolvers, their the most common weapon especially at the start of the game and ammo is plentiful. As for other skills it's good to get a minimum of 25-35 in medicine, science, sneak, speech and one other weapon type if/when possible.


The last stage of levelling is perks, there is no golden rule for perks but anything that boosts your S.P.E.C.I.A.L attributes or Skills is a good way to go. Otherwise pick a fun perk or something that is relevant to your play style. For example if you love using shot guns then Shotgun Surgeon is a must have.


I hope you have found this little guide helpful, thanks for visiting The PC Gamer Guy. 


Need a link? http://fallout.bethsoft.com/index.html