Spore is a multi-genre massively single-player online game designed by Will Wright and has drawn quite a lot of attention due to its massive scope and open ended game play.  Add to that the ability of users to customize completely their .. well everything .. from the ground up and you have a very interesting sandbox game (something Will Wright is known for.)

Spore’s major concept, and the reason they call it a “massively single-player online game” is because all of the content is created by players using editors that are a cross between the “play doh fun factory” and Maya 3d modeling software.  All of the editors are designed to be easy to use and powerful, as well as being as similar as possible to one another so that each lesson you learn in one part of the editor can be applied to another part. Read More

City of Heroes (and thus City of Villains) is one of those sleeper games that has a lot of hidden depth. I played CoH for almost a year starting back in Feb. 2005 when it first came out. I like to refer to it as MMO Lite.

It’s a good game, and a good starter game for those who aren’t really sure about the whole MMO scene. It’s very simple to play and enjoy, and doesn’t bog you down with many of the more complex MMO aspects. For new comers to the market, its perfect. It’s how I got my wife into MMO’s and now I can’t get her away from the computer.. heh (”I just have this one last quest to do..” “Uh huh.. sure honey.. ” heh) Read More

I’m starting to get upset / annoyed with Age of Conan.  Probably it’s more fair to say, disappointed — but you can only scream at your monitor for so long before disappointment spirals down into something else. 

My main character is a ranger — and as with all games that have a ranger class, he’s broken.  Primarily when it comes to damage output. 

I understand that a range, being a subset of the rogue class, can’t tank.  I’m there.  In EQ1 rangers were made of paper.. I’m cool with that.. But the ranger should be able to put out some damage, and since they can’t tank, they should be able to put out damage at range.  If they can’t for any reason do ranged damage, what’s the point of a ranger?   

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Another console to PC port that’s been out since April, Assassins Creed is a third person sneaker created by Ubisoft in which the player repeatedly delves into his genetic memory in order to assume the role of a 12th century assassin trying to kill various historical figures during the crusades in the holy land.

Simply put, this is a very impressive game — Not perfect, but worth the purchase.  To be honest I’m not sure why I waited as long as I did.  The game itself is quite beautiful and has a very nice story line.  It’s the first game in a while that I would classify as “smart” and clever at every stage — taking quite a step away from your usual brute force or shoot’em up games.  Stealth in this game is everything.

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Being the avid PC gamer that I am, I wasn’t about to go and buy an XBox 360 back in Nov. ‘07 just for Mass Effect.. but damn I came close..

This game looked awesome! Everyone that played it said it was awesome and that I should rush out and get a console to play it — so needless to say I was really annoyed that it wasn’t a PC game and even more annoyed at folks telling me to buy a console.. But I was very excited when I heard it was eventually coming to the PC!

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It’s interesting.. I pride myself on beta testing just about every MMO that has ever been.. So I was a little sad when for whatever reason, the gods decided to not let me into the Age of Conan beta.  Eh, these things happen, however this meant I was pretty much slobbering at the bit waiting for access to the game. (I was one of the few that got into the paid early access for the game however, so that’s close enough for me. )

Firstly let me say, funcom has done a wonderful job capturing and portraying the world of Conan.. I’m having a lot of fun.

However, I was initially worried.   I beta tested and played Anarchy Online and by all accounts it’s initial release was a nightmare. It was truly, truly bad.  Funcom, and all other game companies for that matter, learned that day that to release a broken game dooms the game forever.  I had assumed that funcom learned its lesson and would release a stable game, in fact I had visions of board meetings in which the members all chanted, “please not like AO”… So you can imagine my shock when at 12pm my time, when the doors were to open.. Nothing happened.

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