Gaming World

Sporting a revamped combat system, Civilization V addressed – finally – the weak battle strategies of its predecessors.

Rather than allowing players to stack up entire armies and simply charge at enemy city walls, only one unit can occupy each tile on the map.

You can now fire from far with ranged units, while terrain plays a bigger role. Your soldiers can see through forests and hills but place them on high ground and they get attacking and defensive bonuses.

All of this means you have to plan your battles more conscientiously.

Also new is the concept of city states. You can choose to befriend cities like Singapore and Kuala Lumpur and receive gifts of ivory and incense, as well as help to score that decisive victory.

Of course, you can attack and plunder these cities instead.

There are no more square tiles, only hexagon ones, which makes it easier to figure out which adjacent tiles your units can move to.

Culture now plays a bigger role. Not only does it expand your nation’s borders, it also lets you impose social policies which comes with bonuses like increasing the speed at which your workers build farms and upping your production.

You play as the leader of one of 18 civilisations, from the ancient Aztec Montezuma to Greece’s Alexander the Great. Some leaders have been changed. Instead of Mao Zedong, you now play Empress Wu Zetian. Oda Nobunaga now leads samurai Japan instead of his ally Tokugawa Ieyasu. Each civilisation has specific strengths and special units.

After weeks of battling Zergs in outer space in Starcraft 2, it was a pleasant change to return to civilisation. With improved graphics and intriguing gameplay changes, Civ 5 looks set to conquer the hearts and minds of PC warlords around the world.

checkout the Civilization V here:
Sid Meiers Civilization IV Beyond the Sword

Sid Meier’s Civilization V

Tags: Computer Games, PC Gaming, Microsoft Xbox

Singapore gamers will be among the first in the world to get their hands on the much- anticipated PlayStation Move on Sept 15.

Last week, Digital Life took a first look at Sony’s answer to Nintendo’s motion controller for the Wii console.

In essence, the wand-shaped Move senses human motions and gestures and translates them into on-screen actions.

From mimicking a table tennis paddle to a bowling ball and an archer’s bow, the PlayStation Move – when combined with the PlayStation 3 (PS3) game console – is expected to bump up the realism of games without the need for dedicated game peripherals.

The Move is said to be more precise than the Wii remote, or Wii-mote. It is also wireless. For the Wii, a wire connects the main Wii remote to a different and less responsive secondary controller, known as the Nunchuk.

So in games where you need to use two controllers, say in a duel where one acts as a sword and the other as a shield, the Move allows for more natural gameplay as there is no cable that hinders movement.

Also, since the Move uses two main controllers, it follows that there should be greater control in such two-handed games compared to using the Wii-mote.

This is evident when comparing archery games available for the Wii and PS3, in which a pair of Moves beat the combination of the Wii-mote and Nunchuk in sensitivity and gameplay realism.

For fans of shooting games, the Move with its trigger button on the rear, can be used as a highly precise virtual gun when coupled with a shooting attachment. Using it to play Time Crisis: Razing Storm beats any shooting game on the Wii.

It must be noted, however, that the PS3 has a faster processor and more realistic graphics compared to the Wii.

The Move allows gamers terrific control of the speed of virtual objects, such as a volleyball during a serve, pass or spike. However, the lack of force feedback means it still has some ways to go before it can deliver truly life-like gameplay.

The Move works with the PlayStation Eye camera, which tracks the colour sphere on top of it.

Up to eight wands can be connected to a single console for games that support up to four players, with two wands for each player.

One caveat: at $69 for each Move wand, a full set of controllers without the Eye camera and other accessories will set you back $552 – more than the price of the PS3 console itself.

click to checkout the move:
PlayStation Move Controller

Tags: Gaming System, Computer Games,

For us, Batman: Arkham Asylum isn’t just an action game, it’s the ultimate Batman simulator. All the feats we’ve associated with the Caped Crusader, creeping in the shadows to evade danger, silently taking out thugs while instilling fear, and even utilizing high-tech bat-gadgetry were realized in-game. And like Batman, we had to use a combination of these abilities to effectively fight burly minions and bosses.

The game didn’t fall short in the story department, either. The villains in Batman’s rogues gallery brought unique gameplay twists and combat challenges, often requiring that we use our bat-brain in addition to batbrawn to best each foe. Scarecrow’s level-warping mind games were a definite highlight, we’ll never forget the scene where Batman is forced to face his parents’ murder. Batman: Arkham Asylum is the best game of 2009 not because it’s a great Batman game, but because it’s the definitive Batman experience. And Mark Hamill’s reprise as the Joker may be the best performance we’ve ever seen in a game.

checkout the Best Games of 2009: Batman: Arkham Asylum

Tags: Gaming System, PC Games, Wii

Like chocolate and peanut butter, tower defense games and zombies were made for each other. But it took the twisted genius of casual gaming impresario Popcap to build the towers out of wacky plants. Instead of harvesting energon cubes and shooting bullets at aliens, you’ll collect sunlight and fire peas at zany zombies. The battle rages in front, behind, and even above your home as you repel the undead hordes.

Click for more details: Plants vs. Zombies

www.plantsvszombies.com

Tags: PC Gaming, , Gaming System

We were doomed from the moment we opened the Dragon Age: Origins box. A dark-fantasy BioWare RPG and the spiritual successor to the Baldur’s Gate saga, Dragon Age: Origins sucked us in with its super-in-depth story, shades-of-gray moral choices, memorable characters, and great combat. Yes, Virginia, there is a BioWare RPG with great tactical combat.

Though it hews to a familiar fantasy setting, full of elves, dwarves, and wizards, Dragon Age goes out of its way to subvert some of the genre’s most cherished tropes. Elves are oppressed and live in ghettoes, dwarves don’t speak with Scottish accents, and the moral landscape is ambiguous. The first five hours or so are taken up by one of six different origin stories, which converge in an epic battle. Only then does the game truly begin. And it’s wonderful: violent, moody, unpredictable, and full of delightful surprises. For a good time, crack open a glass phylactery!

We easily sunk 80 hours into our first play-through without buying any DLC or the forthcoming expansion pack. And then we rolled another character and started again.

Dragon Age: Origins

Tags: Windows 7 Games, Wii, Microsoft Xbox

What do you get if you take four people, a couple of hopped-up dune buggies, and an infinite number of pistols, rifles, rocket launchers, and sub-machine guns? Simply the best multiplayer experience of 2009, that’s what. By combining the
frenetic action of hardcore twitch fi rst-person shooters with the progression treadmill and loot-whoring of Diablo-esque
action RPGs, the kids at Gearbox made something unique, a co-op multiplayer that’s greater than the sum of its parts.

While Borderlands isn’t perfectly polished, there are still problems playing with people above or below your level range, the experience is not to be missed. Aft er tweaking routers and disabling firewalls, we settled in for many nights of bliss, mowing down hundreds of mutants and monsters using an arsenal that ranged from silly to just plain awesome. Where else can you kill mutant midgets with a shotgun that fires flaming rockets?

www.borderlandsthegame.com

Borderland – After Dark Horror Fest

Tags: Video Games, Microsoft Xbox, PC Gaming

Say good-bye to Mom for the next few weeks. PopCap Games recently released the sequel to its insanely popular downloadable puzzle game Bejeweled. The original gem-matching puzzler rocketed to fame among casual players, a segment overwhelmingly dominated by middle-aged women.

Bejeweled 2 presses all this audience’s buttons with New Age soundtracks and visuals and a new relaxing Endless mode that lets you “play for eternity and collect jewelry.” We don’t know what that means either, but suffice to say that the launch of Bejeweled 2 is like Doom 3 for soccer moms. Don’t even think about asking to borrow her PC until spring.

www.popcap.com

Tags: Gaming System, PC Gaming, PC Games