There are four characters to try your hand at, Roland, Mordecai, Lilith and Brick, each character has a different action skill, a temperary power up. I’ll explain each one in more detail.

Roland is the soldier class, he is good with shotguns and assault rifles. His action skill gives him a turret that comes with a small energy shield.
Brick is the heavy class, he’s good with explosive weapons. His action skill makes him move faster, take less damage and deal more, called Beserker.
Lilith is the special class, she is good with weapons that fire incendiary, corrosive and shock bullets. Her action skill, called Phase Walking, allows her to turn invisible and appear next to the enemy, dealing damage when she does.
Finally Mordecai is the sniper, he’s good with, believe it or not, snipers and revolvers. His action skill calls a hawk to attack enemys behind cover.
Where I say the character is good with a weapon it’s all subject to change, all you do is find the type of weapon you want and use it alot to get good at it, for example my soldier is level 2 proficiency with a sniper. And under each character there are three skill trees, my soldier is also a medic, when I shoot team mates I heal them and my turret heals people standing near it, including me. But I could of easily become more on the offence and made my turret do more damage, it’s another level of customization.

Roland's skill tree

Talking about guns… Borderlands boasts “8 gazillion guns,” their words not mine. Although this seems like a hard task for the developers to do, they don’t have too. What the game does is randomly generate guns on the fly, and you end up with a gun with some added extras. For some reason my computer decided to give me a shotgun with a scope, not sure how it helps. But what you could end up with is a sniper with +53% critical damage, or a light machine gun with -34% reload speed. Guns can also make bullets; set people on fire, electrocute them, put acid on them or explode.

Which leads me onto my next part, e-penis envy. My sniper sets people on fire when I shoot them, reloads in about 3 seconds, carrys 11 shots per clip and most importently, is yellow. I’m highly proud of this sniper and often find myself thinking about it at school and around my house (sad I know).
On the rare occasion I go online, I start stealing glances at other peoples guns and off-handly complimenting them hoping they’ll notice my yellow sniper (which has a matching assault rifle I should add). But because the stats are randomized then fine tuned, the chances of me getting the same gun as that level 26 who’s gun fires rockets in a shotgun spread, then sets the enemys on fire, is next to none, I have to keep reassuring myself that my penis I mean gun, is fine.

Yes, this is my yellow penis

Of course with any game, story is a factor in how good the game is, and this is the only place Borderlands is let down, it’s about an adventurer (you) who goes to Pandora, (the planet where the game is set,) to find “The Vault.” A fabled place containing objects of great wealth. Not exactly gripping is it? But let’s be honest, when you’ve got a shotgun that electrocutes people, do you really care?

Another thing to add is the look, it is very cartoony, and looks brillient, even on my low-spec computer, all people or creatures are outlined in black giving them a bold look. Overall no complaints what so ever in the visual department.

The humor is this game is also top-notch, weather it’s Gearbox’s info about Nine-Toes (he also has three balls,) Claptrap’s (your robot helper) cries of “Look at me! I’m dancing, I’m dancing!” The signs outside enemy bases reading “Piss off” or just Scooter who’s friend Lucky “Wrecked my mum’s lady parts.” There have been several times I laughed out loud.

The health and safety inspector would have a fit

When you get a little way into the game you unlock a car to play around with, this is hard to drive at first, the car drives towards where your mouse is pointing, but soon becomes easy, you’ll be jumping ‘Piss Gorge’ in no time. There is two weapons to have, rocket launcher and machine gun. But most fun is the fact that these cars can be used in multiplayer, on person driving with another in the turret on top. Those skags don’t stand a chance.

This guy was shouting "I'm going to kill you!" He's a bit confused

The final bit I want to talk about is the multiplayer, where four people can team up to tackle the quests, this is good if everyone is a similar level, because otherwise it gets to hard for the lower level as enemys increase in difficulty the more players there are, but with a good team of similar levels it really is enjoyable, although I personly prefer to plough through it alone.

Overall I think Borderlands is a extremely good game, which is why I’m giving it 4.8/5

Heres a crappy video, the game normally runs faster but Fraps lags it:

Borderlands #1

Image Source: Go Nintendo

Scribblenauts is a side-scrolling puzzle game where you can solve puzzles using basically anything you can think of. Nothing rude or crude though, believe me… I tried! The overall concept of the game really piqued my interest and made me buy it. The developers, 5th cell, are no stranger to the DS with their previous games (Drawn to life and Locks Quest) all getting relatively good reviews (apart from Drawn to life Spongebob Squarepants edition. But I’m going to steer well clear of that.) I expected an amazing game with it winning Game of the show at E3 this year. You control a character called Maxwell who travels through various lands helping people with their conundrums. At least… That’s what I gathered from it as there is very little story to the game.

I really don’t know what you could call this game genre wise, Open world puzzler maybe? There is a massive open world element on the title screen where you can basically ‘summon’ any item you want. Santa with a machine gun fighting against the devil with a chainsaw? You can do that if you really wanted to. Although there is still a limit on how many items you can have on the screen which is a bit of a nuisance but I suppose it is there to keep the game running smoothly.

The graphic style is very cutesy. The cell shaded graphics seem to add to the charm of the game, while the detail on the items is fairly accurate. There isn’t that much to say about the graphics other than they do well to capture the game and the backgrounds add to the ‘atmosphere’ of the game.

The controls are where this game is seriously hindered. I can see what the developers where trying to do with them, making them easy for everyone to pick up and play the game. But it is just too temperamental and really gets on my nerves. You use the stylus to ‘summon’ and move objects. But you also use it to control your character. The problem with this is that sometimes I’ve wanted to pick up an item. But then Maxwell decided to jump to his doom in lava. The other annoying thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any precision with the controls, if you just want Maxwell to move a tiny bit, you can’t. It seems ridiculous not to map controlling Maxwell to the face buttons. Instead they chose to use the face buttons for camera controls. The camera is a fundamental part of the gameplay, but why they didn’t decide to put the character movement to the directional buttons just seems stupid.

Overall this game is REALLY addictive and despite the crappy controls, it is one of those games you have to buy. The puzzles do vary in difficulty and you can get frustrated with some of the puzzles because of the controls but I recommend this game, I give it a 4.5/5

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The story line is that Batman captures the Joker, takes him to Arkham, Joker escapes takes over Arkham, carnage ensuses.

Visually this is a lovely looking game, adequately dark and dismal, but where this game really shines is gameplay.

[No Spoilers] There are two types of combat straight up fighting and, my personal favourite, stealth. In regular fighting you punch and kick goons like there’s no tommorrow, if a whitish blue halo appears around a goons head, it means they’re about to attack you, a quick press of triangle, or Y, counters that attack and straight away hits back with an attack of your own, normally a kick to the groin, elbow to the head or something just as painful. Of course you have your regular attacks, with square or X, these are quite weak on their own but once you get good you can start chaining combos together and jump from goon to goon. Not only is this style of fighting fun to play it’s also fun to watch, my little sister, after seeing me kick some guy in the head, winced then said “wouldn’t it be cool if you could kick their heads off?” it’s unusual for her to actully enjoy watch me play, seeing as she doesn’t like playing games *mock horror*. The other type of combat is the stealthy type. What you do here is there’s a large room where you have to take down a certain amount of enemies without being seen, when I say you without being seen, it isn’t an straight away game over if they do, but you quickly get killed because they have guns, which seem to be loaded with Batman’s personal equivelant of cryptonite, so you don’t last long. You spend most of your time up on gargoles which are in most of these rooms, the first few times you do these is easy, kill-grapple-kill-grapple etc but later in the game [Minor Spoiler] explosives are rigged to the gargoyles so you can only stay on them for a second or two, this makes it a lot harder because there isn’t many other places to hide on the floor. There are several moves that Batman can perform such as inverted takedowns, where he string goons to the gargoyles, and silent takedowns.

Another major part of the game are the boss battles. [Minor Spoilers] Only a few are the tried and tested formula ‘dodge attacks then attack weak point for maximum damage’. For example [Major Spoiler] Killer Croc’s boss battle involves no direct contact, instead you creep along a board walk as slowly as possible, most of these battles are fun, and I haven’t come across a tedious one yet.

[Minor Spoiler] One of the last things in B: AA is the Riddler challenges, challenges set by believe it or not, the Riddler. There are three types of challenge given.
1. Riddler Trophys, these are just little trophys hidden everywhere across Arkham Island.
2. Question marks, all these are are question marks that are only revealed when you go in detective mode, the dot may be hidden in the background so you have to line them up the dot and the line and take a picture.
3. Riddles, these are just a straight up riddle with the answer around you. For example, [Minor Spoiler] one of the riddles is something along the lines of “Don’t forget to pay your respects to your parents”, so what you’ve got to do is find a little sign in memory of Batmans parents.

Seeing as I have listed a few of pros I’ll list a couple of cons. When you’ve got a straight up brawl none of the enemies seem to die soon, you’ll kick them in the head but you’ll only daze them and they’ll soon be up again, when you are fight 6 people or more it soon takes a long time to defeat all the enemies. Also the games ‘detective mode’ (where you can see special objects in the enviroment, or enemies skeletons no matter how many objects are in the way) means that you aren’t really suprised by any attacks, or you don’t miss any collectible objects that are on your main path.

Apart from these minor things and a couple of others there are no other problems, this is why I am giving this game a 9 out of 10 and a Joe thumbs up.

FIFA 10 has really seen the AI upped a notch with more intelligent and human opposition countered with a more intelligent team mates making better of the ball runs and covering you when you evidently get played out of position or have a huge run up the wing.

Players feel more human for example today my defender jumped up to head the ball but missed and instead of miracly landing on his feat from a diving header like he would in a previous FIFA, he ended up face planting into the floor which not only made the game feel more realistic but was very funny to watch.

FIFA 10 looks as if it has got rid most bugs from its predecessors but seems to have brought a few with it. For example on 09 the commentators would always say that when I did a sliding tackle and the opponent got injured I was the one that had been crippled from my own tackle. Thankfully in FIFA 10 that piece of commentary hasn’t come up yet and looks as if it has been left out. The commentary isn’t perfect yet like the time when I had a goal kick but according to the commentators it was a corner. Overall the cometary it is much better than it was.

Despite these faults the game feels more realistic, faster, slicker and is as fun as ever. Definitely the best FIFA yet, a solid 9/10 from me!

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If done well this could be a brilliant adventure/comedy movie that does justice to the game and ends up with EA selling loads more copies.

But this could also go completely wrong, because, really, what can they really do a film about? There’s not much in-game that’ll make good viewing, just good playing.

I hope this turns out good, but there’s a little niggling feeling inside me that it won’t.

Source: G4TV

Not too long ago (a year or two) I had a virus Norton “360″ free virus scanner didn’t pick it up, just like the paid for product! But Avast Anti-virus picked it up and removed it no problem. Why pay for something that just has a flashy user interface(Avast’s not so flashy but good enough) and picks up programs and harmless tracking cookies as viruses and “threats”? Just download Avast Free from: www.avast.com and save yourself a few hundred quid! It wasn’t so bad for me I got it at a really low price because of some special offer when I bought my Windows computer!

With the new release of Norton “360″ V3.0 I think their sales will rise due to the flashy new look and the v3.0 (I doubt it’s that updated)

(Yes for all those mac fans/users out there, I’m a PC and proud of it! Oh look I’m not compatible with viruses, *que buzzer* WRONG I’ve seen millions of mac viruses)

From,

Danny: Everything Tech – Everything PC