Dirt 3 Review

The race for the genre's crown of best is always a very exciting occurrence. Last year Codemasters won the BAFTA award with an excellent re-introduction to F1 racing, a title that received high honours from this site among others. Now they're introducing Dirt 3, is it another potential winner? Let's find out.

Modes

This year's instalment of the rally series offers plenty of changes including a new menu scheme. The trailer sequence is gone and replaced by a simple menu structure that is highly inspired by the triangular shape. It definitely reminds me of the Need for Speed series for some reason, but that's not necessarily a good thing. Without the trailer I can't help feeling less immersed into the whole driver experience.

The now simplified menu gives access to a host of familiar modes including: Dirt tour, multiplayer and singleplayer. The last mode offers all the different types of racing and grants control over all the criteria.

Dirt Tour

As I mentioned earlier, the career mode in Dirt is no longer accompanied by a nice little trailer sequence that stitches it all together. Instead every year of racing is represented by an unwrapped triangle. You will earn points by participating in races and once you've earned enough, the grand final will open up.

The races offer plenty of variation and challenges for gamers of all backgrounds. All the previous types of off-roading are back, but to mix things up Codies added a few more into the mix including smash attack and Gymkhana. Both of them rely heavily on the art of doing tricks on wheels and moving about with absolute ease. While they definitely help cement Dirt 3 as the ultimate arcade racer, I'm not a huge fan of this type of racing. Luckily they can be skipped by excelling in other, more meaningful, events.

Great success comes with more privileges than just the option to skip. Podium finishes will earn points that go into Dirt's ranking system. By obtaining higher levels other teams will offer you a seat in their team. Most of the time these offers will be a trade off between having a faster car and earning more credits for the win, but luckily there're some exceptions to this rule.

Driving

Gravely Silent House of Deadlock Collectors Edition

Quality: Full

Video Game Category:Hidden Object

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:

OS: Windows 98/2000/XP/Vista
Processor: Pentium 4 @ 1.8 GHz/Athlon XP 2400+
Memory: 512 MB (1 GB for Vista)
Hard Drive: 13.33 Mb Free
Video Memory: 128 MB (NVIDIA GeForce 6600/ATI Radeon X800)
Sound Card: DirectX Compatible
DirectX: 9.0c
Keyboard and Mouse
DVD Rom Drive



Save your sister from the grave! After receiving a troubling phone call from your brother-in-law, you’re off on an adventure! Investigate the troubling scene and discover the truth in Gravely Silent: House of Deadlock. Scour gorgeous Hidden Object scenes for valuable clues and unravel the mystery behind your sister’s disappearance. This is a special Collector’s Edition release full of exclusive extras you won’t find in the standard version. As a bonus, Collector’s Edition purchases count toward three stamps on your Monthly Game Club Punch Card!

Dungeon Siege III

 An errant dungeon crawl.

A dungeon crawler without good loot, like Dungeon Siege III, is missing something essential. If the prizes that pop out don't feel valuable, there's no slot machine appeal of opening chests, busting apart wooden barrels or slicing up monsters. Dungeon Siege III's bits of loot come with all kinds of statistical bonuses, and a multitude of special effects like elemental damage or chance to stun. But it's rare to ever get a strong sense that swapping one item for another has a significant effect, many items have near identical visual designs, and no piece is moddable. After not too long, scooping up loot begins to feel like garbage collection instead of treasure hunting.

Obsidian Entertainment, which took over the franchise from creator Gas Powered Games, is more interested in offering satisfying combat mechanics than a tantalizing loot lottery. Each of the four character classes gets nine core abilities - three defensive, the other six offensive and split across two fighting stances. All the abilities can be evolved by gaining experience and leveling up, giving Anjali's area-of-effect firestorm a healing effect or Reinhart's glyph magic a chance to slow enemy movement speed.

Dead Space 2 Review

Dead Space was a game that rocked the foundations of horror video games for a long time. With its innovate AI that would stay hidden and pop out at you when you least expected it. It even continues the particularly weird and at the same time awesome storyline from the previous game. Dead Space 2 does include a few things to mix it up but keeps true to the first video game in the series. Most first video games where the main character just killed off an entire armada of enemies and lost everyone they know and love in the process portray the main character as unaffected in the second game. In Dead Space 2 however Issac(the main character) is torn apart by the previous games events and the death of his girlfriend. Several game play elements actually have to do with the fact that Issac may be losing his grip on reality. Despite that fact he still fights on anyway but at least they acknowledge it and make it a part of the game unlike other video games.

We will start Dead Space 2 on a good note by reviewing the main portion of the game or single player as some would call it. For the most part you will playing in dark environments with a light at your side and the hope that the necromorph's (zombie alien things) don't come up from behind to get you when you least expect it (they will). Often times you will hear them but not see them putting you on the edge and starting your cautiousness. It would be a lie to say that you won't spend a lot of time looking for the enemy in one room and not finding them. Then just as you are about to move on they come from behind you and attack when your guard is down. This is just one classic example of how smart the AI actually is in this game. Adding to that is the music which adds to the intensity and excitement of the unknown darkness that often surrounds you. Dead Space 2 even has a unique health bar that is located on your characters back which was used in the first video game. Basically Dead Space 2 his game is what all horror movies and horror genre video games should look at when they develop from now on because this game does it very well.

The armor of this game looks just as amazing as it did in the Dead Space and thankfully they decided not to give us the most powerful armor in the game if we purchased it the first day it came out, as they did in Dead Space. However for the first part of the game you will not be wearing armor and will look like just any other person until you get your armor back and can look totally awesome again. In a way this does make sense because in real life you could not be possibly be wearing that heavy armor all the time, so it seems like a good choice by the developers to have you get your suit as the first task in the game. A lot of the weapons from the Dead Space make a comeback in Dead Space 2 with a few changes to them(mostly for the better), all of them remain pretty unique and you may actually have to change weapons sometimes and not just blast one gun the whole game like most other shooting games. To add even more worth to single player the upgrade systems and purchasing system is very well done and you cannot just buy everything too early or not have the ability to buy things due to money restrictions later in the game.