Other Games

Game Tasks, The New Way to Up your game.

Recently released websites, such as GameTasks,  have introduced players to a new way to play online, offline, and even MMORPG games..

Although sites like this are still in their infancy, they provide very useful services which, before long might find the average gamer a lot of extra time to do the things they want to, and spend less time on the boring parts added to most games to slow players down.

Anyone can offer their services on such websites, as it doesn’t cost anything to register and they don’t ask you for personal information. For customers, there will always be someone get you past boring points in games, make you money, and help you level up, or just be there as a helping hand if you prefer to do things yourself.

For many people, finding a good group of players can be hard to do, perhaps they live in a different time zone, or can only play odd hours. This is where services like GameTasks come in. For as little as $2 per hour, you can Rent a Gaming Buddy, who can play just about any game at any time, to ensure someone has your back on long and hard quests. You can also get PVP training as well as get paid to train others. Gamers who are experts in their respective fields can offer their help for money, meaning the hired players are generally the cream of the crop, and customers are certain to get their moneys worth.

The other major service offered by Game Tasks services is to just do traditional one on one teaching. You might want to learn how to duel as a Trooper in Star Wars The Old Republic, or how to beat the Death Star level of Star Wars The Force Unleashed (One of the predecessors of SWTOR). Even if you don’t see your particular task or mission listed on the site, you can request it in the shout box, and the helpful group will get to your request as soon as possible (which if early results are anything to go on, is pretty fast!). Also, If you have some special gaming skill, you can put a shout on the Game Tasks Quest Help section, and when a player comes along needing your specialized set of skills, you will be notified.

All in all, websites like GameTasks and others provide an interesting new corner to the gaming market, and as their rapid growth continues we will see their services become common place across the net. So what are you waiting for, it’s free to register, they don’t ask you for any more information than it takes to register to a forum, and they pay you via paypal.

 

SWG Draws to a Close

 

So three days ago it was announced that SWG was going to be shut down on December 15th. Didn’t see that coming! wink wink.

So anyway, where are some screenshots from the game. This is just a small selection, as going through the entire collection would take hours and hours. Click any of the images for a better look.

You mad?

 

 

 

 

The Family Guy take on Star Wars

Family guy has now released their entire original trilogy of Star Wars remakes, much to fan’s pleasure.

Over the years many remakes of the classic saga have made their way onto our screens, and usually with a great deal of laughter. Spaceballs for example took a great satirical take on the series, with great additions to the expanded universe, such as the schwartz and the rings which harnessed it.

The family guy saga rather than being a full length feature, is something more like a double length episode. However, over this time each one covers all the major events of the plots of each film. This means a lot of the dialog is gone, however most of the most recognizable lines are still there.

The series includes all of the favorite family guy characters such as Peter as Han, Louis as Leia, Chris as Luke and Meg as the Sarlacc. Stewie also makes an appearance as a Darth Vader which has a lot in common with Dark Helmet from Spaceballs.

Their take on ANH, Blue Harvest, began the series with great success. As it says in the title crawl for It’s a Trap (You guessed it, their version of ROTJ) this prompted them to make the rest of the saga, and according to a recent interview with Seth McFarlane editions of the three prequels may be churned out over the next year and a half. This will please many fans, and should provide many obvious chances for humor, taking advantage of ever-so-iconic characters such as Jar Jar Binks and a young Anakin Skywalker.

While Lucasfilms stays off their backs hopefully we can see Family guy continue their run of hilarious Star Wars Remakes, and perhaps even move onto other iconic movies (The Godfather or Indiana Jones anyone?) in the future!

Star Wars Battlefront II

Star Wars Battlefront II is probably the best Star Wars FPS game released to date. Through the campaign, players are involved in major battles as a member of the 501st, an elite regiment of troopers, during the Clone wars and Galactic Civil War.

When playing there is no doubt that this is the successor of Star Wars Battlefront I, as many of the good points from Battlefront have been included and improved upon in this second edition. Probably the best part of the game, and the one which the developers of SWTOR can learn the most from, is the engaging story line. It really makes players feel like they ARE one of the clone brothers of the 501st, and we see the transition from Galactic Republic to Galactic Empire from this new and interesting perspective.

The single player campaign of Battlefront II has many improvements over that of its predecessor. Even though both games are set during the same time, with the same infantry regiment, there are enough different battles in the second instalment of the series to make it not seem like an updated version of the first. This is vital, because they do effectively tell the same story, and a few of aforementioned the battles ARE featured in both.

The campaign of Battlefront II is objective oriented (although some times you do need to resort to the familiar capture points and defeat reinforcements) which is what really allows for considerable story to be added to the game. During battles, if the player is doing well enough, it is possible to play for one life as a Hero character, such as Darth Vader, Obi-Wan Kenobi or Han Solo. This adds some interesting flavour to the game, as each of the Heros have their own special abilities, and are far stronger than normal units (although you do lose health over time).

Proper space warfare is also featured in Battlefront II, and provides quite a reasonable Star Wars flight simulator in doing so. Players can blast capital ships and other fighters from the outside, or board them and gut their interiors. Although it is by no means a fully fledged flight simulator, or even as in depth as X-wing Vs Tie Fighter might have been, it does have a nice spacey feel to it and is about as realistic as something designed to allow players to feel what flying a Star Wars starfigher might actually be like can be. This is another place in which the developers of The Old Republic could learn from Battlefront II, by implementing multi player space combat such as this, not just Star Fox style linear arcade modes.

In addition to the campaign mode there is a galactic conquest mode as in Battlefront I, and other Instant Action modes which are very entertaining. These include things like a Wampa invasion of Echo base battle, and an all hero battle-royal in Mos Eisley between our favourite Star Wars characters, regardless of what era they are from. One aspect which incorporates all of the game modes is the battle award feature. Players can get awards for achieving certain milestones during each life, and are given temporary upgrades for doing so. If enough of these milestones are achieved over the course of many battles, they are permanently awarded to the player and are in effect during any future fighting.

All in all Star Wars Battlefront II is a good quality Star Wars game, which can still be enjoyed even by today’s audience who are used to games like Call of Duty Black Ops and Bad Company 2. It offers many improvements over Battlefront I, and provides an engaging story and many hours of other content for players to enjoy.

Overall Battlefront II achieves a 8/10 Rating.

Pros:

Space and hero combat is very entertaining

Immersive campaign with the 501st

Nice visuals, game engine and general game play

Good selection of never-before-seen battles from the era

Cons:

The AI is once again quite unintelligent

Some of the classes, although cool, are rather useless

Minimal re-playability value

Star Wars Battlefront

Star Wars Battlefront will forever be a classic Star Wars game of console gaming. Its game-play is fast paced and interesting, and in this SWTOR has a lot to learn from it. For its time, it was a very new and exciting shooter, and allowed players to participate in all of their favourite battles from the Star Wars saga.

The game mainly revolved around conquest modes, where players had to capture and hold command points. A game could be won by either capturing every command point simultaneously, or by defeating all of the reinforcements on the opposing team. This is a fairly interesting game type, which is very lucky because almost all battles in the game are of this variety.

The units in Battlefront were pretty much what anyone would expect from a Star Wars shooter. There were stealth classes, snipers, soldiers and other special classes that could be unlocked during battles. Also on the battlefield occasionally were heros, but unfortunately unlike in Battlefront II, these could only be controlled by the computer.

There were numerous vehicles in Battlefront, as well as star fighters that players could pilot. It lacked specific space modes, so these fighters were constrained to flight within the atmosphere on the ground maps, which worked surprisingly a well (and is another thing the Bioware developers of SWTOR could learn from).

Outside if campaign there is of course an Instant action mode, and an additional Galactic Conquest game type. This involves commanding fleets and taking over the galaxy, one star at a time, which gives players much more freedom to pick their fights, although they are much the same as the ones encountered in campaign or instant action mode.

Battlefront has a good star-warsy feel to it, and enough content to keep the average player entertained for some hours. Even though every game is the same old conquest mode, this mode allows for enough uniqueness that battles are rarely the same, so players do not bore easily (even if they are repeating the same map over and over again). Although by today’s standards the graphics are pretty ordinary, at the time they were much more acceptable and even attractive in some regards. In this regard Battlefront and Star Wars The Old Republic are quite similar, as neither is trying to break new ground in the visuals department.

Over all Battlefront achieves a 7/10 rating.

Pros:

• Engaging Star Wars feel.
• Lengthy campaign with re-playability value.
• Good range of classes.
• Interesting vehicle combat and piloting.

Cons:

• Average Graphics.
• Repetitive conquest mode.
• Often foolish AI.

Star Wars Galaxies

Unlinke SWTOR, Star Wars Galaxies has been around for a long time. Released in 2003, it has had seven years to mature and grow. Nobody will argue that these years have been a wild ride for the game. There were some ups, as well as a few very well known downs. These were of course the combat upgrade and new game enhancements, which were met with unanimous negative reviews, and saw a serious drop in subscriber numbers. If anything is learned by the developers of SWTOR from their predecessor, it is to avoid changes like this.

That aside, Star Wars Galaxies provided an unparalleled Star Wars universe, where players could really choose their own path unlike any game, then or now. This is one area in which SWTOR falls down, as it seems it is not trying, and will never be able to, compete with the sandbox nature of Galaxies which attracted many in the first place.

In many ways, Galaxies seems superior to the upcoming Old Republic. It’s space system was far more open, players were free to do what they pleased, and there were complex and challenging resource and crafting systems. Also incorporated were involved and detailed ship customisation sub-games which were both interesting, and generated a lot of repeatable content for players to continue optimising their craft.

The Player versus Player system in Star Wars Galaxies was also one of the better ones from any MMORPG today. Like the rest of the game, it was very open, and battles could and did take place anywhere around the galaxy, although they did tend to concentrate at a few heavily contested locations (Restuss anyone?). Large fights were possible anywhere, although there was usually significantly latency due to the poor servers employed by SOE (One of the games major flaws). So far, SWTOR does not seem to support such large scale conflicts, which has displeased many of its most avid supporters.

The graphics of galaxies were also somewhat more realistic than those of SWTOR, which has chosen to take a more cartoon-esque approach to visuals. As can be seen in the space ship screen-shot above, the game also supported various forms of 3D viewing, with cheap anaglyph methods available to all, whilst those with more advanced computer monitors could take advantage of polarised or shutter glasses.

Although the developers of Star Wars Galaxies did make many mistakes, they also did many things right. Their MMORPG still having a steady subscriber base as it approaches its eighth anniversary only confirms this. There are many things that Bioware can learn from Galaxies, and if done well and with patience, they should be able to, in SWTOR, avoid many of the problems of their predecessor, and incorporate many of the positive points.

Over all SWG achieves a 8.5/10 rating. Although a lot has changed since its release 7 years ago, the current game is well made and entertaining.

Pros:

• Involved crafting, equipment and space customisation systems.
• Entertaining player combat.
• Large open range game world.
• Good grouping, guilding and community tools.

Cons:

• Excessive lag.
• Very demanding on computer resources.
• Currently low-ish subscriber numbers.
• Some irritating bugs and game mechanics