As of late, a lot of our members have been experiencing lag while playing on our current Team Fortress 2 server due to it being situated in America. Thankfully, the great guys at {wgg} have launched a UK server to solve these problems!

Make sure to check it out! (click here to be taken to the server listings)

My thoughts when I saw my lovely mother jumping around with ‘Wii Carnival Games’ in her hands were a mixture.

My head screamed “NOOOO DEAR LORD NOOOO”

My heart screamd “OMG DUCKIES”

You should know I am extremely easily swayed, and the yellow cardboard duckies won me over straight away. I sat down tentantively, and felt the wiimote in my hand. “Oh dear Lord” I thought, “What I am doing should be kept a secret”. But alas, as soon I I started shooting ducks and playing on grabby machines, I looked like this cool chick

IT WAS AMAZZZZING! With 25 games you’re never ever bored. You collect tickets for fun fidoodles like the grabby machine and coin slots, and you will get SO ADDICTED you’d think you were on heroine. There are tonnes of things to unlock, so if you love games like super smash brothers and harry pottter and such like, you will love this game. It’s colours, art, and light hearted fun would warm even Tommy Vercetti’s cold heart. Hey, he’d love those duckies.

I think the greatest thing about this game is its originality with the wii. The way it uses the wiimote in the different games is diverse and will keep you from getting bored, such as the ‘Strongest Man’ game, where you need to shake the wiimote to pump up your strength then whack it when the light turns green. It hurts your arm, but I swear by the time you get ‘Buttercup’ 472381 times, you’ll be an angry champion in no time. Games such as the frog leap may be new to you, and effectively mean you can practise for when that carnival comes home and then actually bring home tonnes of junk! How fantastic! eh?

So all in all, if you see this in the shops, I recommend you get it. I only paid £15.99 for it, and considering ive waited a year and cooking mama is still £30, i think it’s a bargain. So much for your money, you’ll never stop playing!

Thanks to the wonderful, wonderful people over at {wgg} we now have four servers, all of which anyone can play on

We have a Team Fortress 2 server as well as three Half Life 2 Deathmatch servers!

For more info click here!

= Server Information =

Team Fortress 2

-{wgg}- nFortress Clan Server

208.167.247.219:27015

Half Life 2: Deathmatch

-{wgg}- nFortress Server 1: Killboxes, etc.

8.12.18.122:27015

-{wgg}- nFortress Server 2: Custom maps, etc.

8.6.77.125:27015

-{wgg}-nFortress Server 3 (UK): Killboxes, custom maps, etc.

85.234.148.26:27145

I click, my eye twitching as the tiny marble ricochets of a peg and then rebounds towards the final orange. My fists clench, as the camera zooms right in on the marble. It all goes slow motion as they collide. Suddenly the screen explodes in colour, particles flying everywhere as “Ode To Joy” blares out of my speakers. I jump to my feet and scream in relief! I’d been on that level for ages…

Peggle is one of many casual games developed by Popcap and distributed on Steam. While everyones heard of Bejeweled (an extremely popular internet game, so popular my cousin actually bets on it through yahoo games) Peggle is mainly only known to those who bought the Orange Box and got Peggle Extreme for free. Either way, if you’ve heard of it before but dont have it, go buy it! Now! From here! However if you’ve never heard of this at all, then read on…

Peggle is a mix between pinball, and those games where you drop balls past the little pegs to get points at the bottom. That doesn’t really make sense does it? Thought not. Well, lets put it this way. Your given a a board of “Pegs”, colored circles that are scattered across the screen (normally in conjunction to the spectacular artwork behind it) and you have to fire marbles to hit all the orange pegs. Once you hit all the orange pegs you progress to the next board and do the same. There is a distinct difficulty curve, with the last four levels becoming a swearathon for those who are easily frustrated (i.e Me) but still maintaing the ease of other casual games. I cleared this in around 6-7 hours (which is longer than Portal) but shorter than most puzzle games. It’s certainly strengthened by the unlockable challenge levels, but to be honest there’s no real reward for completing them and with some of them bordering on the impossible I didn’t play them all to completion.

Where Peggle manages to shine however is with it’s characters, unlocked by progressing through the story mode. Each one of these wacky and quite frankly bizarre characters (of which there are ten) have there own special “power”. For example for the first character, a unicorn named Bjorn would you believe, has super guide, a Puzzle Bobble style help guide for securing those tricky orange pegs while the dragon Lord Cinderbottom has a fireball that burns all pegs in it’s path. Although it may not seem it at first, each of these powers are balanced and extremely helpful considering which level your playing, although the Egyptian cat character may be an exception.

As well as the powers, there are other ways of securing more points as well as additional marbles (you only start with ten). At the bottom of the screen is a small “Bucket”, when your ball falls in you get it back. Also, considering how many pegs you hit in one turn you can get up to three balls, depending on how may points you gain. There’s also a small purple peg, that when hit gives you a point boost.

Features of the game include an “Adventure” mode, which basically is just what the whole game has to offer in terms of levels and characters, a “Duel” mode which is great fun as you argue whether or not this game comes down to skill or luck (it’s normally luck when they win, I find), a “Quick Play” mode which is just replaying the levels to gain high scores as well as the “Challenge” mode that was mentioned earlier. You can also save your replays of levels if you wish, but personally I don’t really see the attraction..

In conclusion, I can only say this. Peggle is an exceptional puzzle game but wont be winning any awards for anything else, It’s a great time waster, but you’ll be bored after a week or so and it’s certainly not worth £10 in shops. Get it from Steam if your interested, or buy the Orange Box and get Peggle Extreme for free. It’s exactly the same, just with only 10 levels and a valve twist.

Now If you’ll excuse me, I still have some Peggle fever…..

I’m not normally one to like RPG’s. I mean sure, I’ve certainly played my fair share. Baulders Gate, Paper Mario, Final Fantasy… You name it and I’ve probably played it but for some reason… They bore me. Maybe it’s the constant attacking and killing. The +5 damage and +3 armor and the blah blah blah blah. SNORE! I don’t care! I much prefer a hardcore FPS, rushing to the enemy base while a million bullets soar past me missing me by mere nanometers. It’s the adrenaline I love. Yet for some reason, Oblivion has really appealed to me…

Now let me make something clear first of all. It is a first person game, but that’s not why it interested me. To be perfectly honest it was the graphics, but as always they became just another aspect in this vast and beautifully detailed world. I fell in love, and Cyrodill is where I now reside. 

Everything about this game is executed with style. The combat is easily accessible. Left click to swipe your sword, right click to block and C to cast a spell. Compared to the combat on lets say Blizzards World Of Warcraft it’s much easier to get your head around. None of this boring click where you want to attack and wait, Oblivion throws you deep into the action, face to face with your attacker. It’s brilliant and never gets old especially with thousands of enemies to face, a lot of them created using the same customization that you used to make your character. Unfortunately, this leads me to where Oblivion falls flat on it’s face for the first time. I don’t know whether it’s just me but everyone in this world is ugly. Disgustingly so. Distorted features, greasy hair, tanned shoulders and white faces… It’s laughable, which sort of ruins the immersion aspect that the game so desperately tries to offer. 

It almost seems lazy that Bethesda chose to use such horrible character models, especially when the world they live in painstakingly beautiful. This is one of the main reasons why I love Oblivion. Nothing beats a walk through the forests as the sun sets, or climbing a mountain during sunrise and then traveling to the imperial city just because it looks so damn nice. Everything about this game screams “Explore me!”,and my God it certainly doesn’t stop you! It’s possible to complete the game without venturing through the main story, but just by hunting animals, selling their hides and buying property around the various cities. 

Despite it’s minor flaws (Some of which are so minor and/or trivial that I wont even go into them, thats why we have zero punctuation) Oblivion Is a game you wont forget. I promise you that. Now if you excuse me I’m off to restore peace to Cyrodill, save Kavatch from the Oblivion invasion or perhaps just grab a horse and ride down to the imperial city, because lets face it. There’s nothing stopping me from doing anything. 

This is possibly the best wii game ever. I haven’t had this much excitement on my Wii since Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess! I love it so much, I can’t bum it enough!

For those of you unfamiliar with the Fire Emblem series, it is a tactical role playing game made by Nintendo. It is developed by Intelligent Systems, who also made Advance Wars, and it works similiarily. The first Fire Emblem was released in Japan only in 1990 and was called Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragons
and the Blade of Light, or in Japanese: Fire Emblem: Ankoku Ryū to Hikari no Tsurugi. However, the first console game to make it to the West was Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the Gamecube.

To best describe the gameplay, we have to look back at an amazing game on the Sega Megadrive called Shining Force. You control multiple characters across what is essentially a battlefield and attack the enemy. In the enemies turn, they do the same. Its very hard to describe without use of picures, so here is one!

As you can see, you move your player and then attack. When you have done this for all of your characters, or choose to end the turn early, your turn is over. The enemy does the same and so on. What is really amazing about this is you can really use tactics in it. You can send a weak archer up to the front line and have him stand behind a strong ally and shoot the enemy from over your allies’ head. This simple tactic allows you to damage them, without vice versa.

Also, everytime you attack an enemy, if they have a weapon and are in range with that weapon when you attack them, they will counterattack. This makes it a whole lot more interesting. It also allows for some classic moments. On numerous occasions, I have dilebrately left a strong character at the front and the enemy has chose to atack them. Then when the enemy has done very little damage, or has missed altogethor, my powerful character has killed them from full health in one or two hits (you can two attacks if you are faster than the enemy). This is what the attack looks like, if you choose to have it on (if you have it off, the game flows faster)

The animations are brilliant and the movies just blew me away. I was in total shock that a wii game could produce such amazing quality graphics. The best picture of one of the movies I could find, does it no justice whatsoever. But I thought I’d show it you anyway. Imagine that, but less blurred and more colourful and just generally BETTER.

Ok, where was I? I’ve done: history, gameplay and graphics. Excellent.

Now the lifetime. OH.MY.FUCKING.GOD. WHOAH!! HUGE LIFETIME! I am about 60-75% of the way through and on nearly 30 hours! At this rate, this game could last even longer than Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess! Its amazing! And I love every minute of it. I suppose though, it is an RPG. And they do have huge lifetimes. The length of each battle varies depending on your objective and how you go about achiveing it. I for one, play EVERY SINGLE move meticulously, to achieve maximum damage to the enemy and achieve minimum damage to my characters. For me, a normal battle lasts between 30mins – 1hour and final chapter battles (big ones with hard bosses) lasting 2-3hours. However, if you are are a casual gamer, you will be pleased to know you can save battles halfway through and resume them later.

Something I need to comment briefly on, is Death. And you’re thinking “Of course Shrimpy, you are going to be killing a lot of enemies.” That’s true. However, they can kill you too. And if they kill one of your characters, that character is DEAD. Forever. Gone. Sayanara. And they ain’t coming back! No Pheonix Down will magically resurect them and make them fine and dandy. They’re dead, live with it. For 99% of characters, this is what happens. They die, they dissapear forever and the only place you ever see them again is on the character map where thier face is greyed out. However, in some battles, if you let an important character die, you have to start again from last save. However, you will become so attached to some characters and will find them so effective, that if they die, you restart your console anyway. On the battle I am currently on, I have had to restart five times. The first time, it was a lack of organisation, and then I rushed into things too much and took far too many risks. Thats the main reason why I am here, typing this, and not upstairs playing it.

Before I give a conclusion, and leave my own personal score for it, I have to touch briefly on characters. Characters are what makes this game. You will find yourself hating some and loving others. You genuinely build up a relationship with them. You command a whopping total of 76 characters on Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. 44 of these are ones that return from the previous game, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance. You will learn to love or hate each and everyone of them. This totally enhances the game, as you start to stop taking risks for fear of losing your favourite character or having the healer heal the minimal of health of your favourite character even if another character (who you secretly hate) has barely any health at all. I have to fit this dude in somewhere, as he is fucking amazing. His name is Ike, some of you will know him form his endevours on Super Smash Bros Brawl.

And with that, I suppose that about wraps it all up.

I give this game a solid 97%.

And by god, does it deserve it. So grab your wallets, maybe a game you don’t play anymore and want to trade in, catch the bus to your nearest game shop and buy this game as IT ROCKS.

Shrimpy x

Its an MMORPG for the pc. It is the winner of about 18 awards including: Computer Gaming World: MMORPG Game of the Year 2004. It allows YOU to have TOTAL control over YOUR character.

You pick the name, then you choose the costume (with over 1,000,000 different combinations) and of course pick your powers.

Powers

The powers are everything you would expect them to be. They are amazing. You can have any pretty much any element, a good selection of weapons and other powers. You name a power, and chances are, they have it. Invisibilty? Yeah. Flight? Yeah. Teleportation? Yeah. Assualt Rifle? Yeah. Sword? Yeah. Regeneration like Wolverine: Uh huh.

Costume

Costume is one of the best tthings about this game. COstume definds a hero/ villain. You can mhave up to 5 different costumes at one time and they are all interchangeable. Once you made your costume, you can change and edit it, as many times as you wish.

There is much more to be said about this game, but i love it so damn much, I’m off to play it right now. Buh bye! Also, free trials are available and I can send you one. YES YOU!!

Shrimpy x

So I made a movie involving members of our Forum on GMod. Here it is, I hope you like it:

http://www.veoh.com/videos/v69937194EFcf5Ze

I must admit, It’s not very good But if the members of the forum like it then I’ll do some more! Included in this episode is Meevil and Bucko (as well as some secret characters, not linked with the forum). In the next episode expect Gontak, Ladyknowles, Shrimpdude, Friz, Ringo and Jamstruth! 

Ok, so if you haven’t played/heard of Frets on fire, it is a Guitar hero style game for the PC, played with an updide down keyboard, using the F keys as the frets (or you can plug in an Xbox 360 guitar). Now… I love this game, but I stumbled upon something that’s made it just a little bit sweeter (Major under-statement).

This, my friends is the Frets on Fire III: Legends of Rock mod. It re-skins the entire game to look and feel like Guitar Hero! It includes multi-player and the ability to choose what guitar you play, there are even drums for Rock Band songs (though I haven’t tried it yet).

Check out these screens!

Pretty Sweet, huh?

Here’s the download link!

And

Guitar Hero III songs Part 1 << 1st 7 Teirs

Guitar Hero III songs Part 2 << The rest, including bonus tracks

Jak and daxter has always been in my life. Having started playing games at 5 years old (yes, being petrified of the wolves on Tomb Raider 1) I’ve grown around them and developed my own taste. Jak and Daxter was released in 2001, and I was instantly attracted to it’s pretty colours and raving psycho orange-lightning weasel kind of thing. Yes, I am easily pleased!

So…I was incredibly shocked when, in a very deep and meaningful gaming conversation with Meevil, he said he’d never played it! Right then, I fell down dead on the floor with shock. “Why!” I cried. I started to discover that hardly anyone I knew had played this childishly-fascinating game.

Jak and Daxter are best friends, but when one day daxter falls into a a pit of dark eco, he turns into an otsel. They have to go around their crazy planet collecting power cells, while being charged with eco and doing other various fun things.

However, there is more. If you are sitting there thinking, “It’s a rip-off Bandicoot and ratchet!” then you are fooled! The games are closely linked, with pictures of ratchet and clank plastered all around Haven city where you recide. The game is incredibly fun, with a million gazillion different places to explore. I promise you, you will never finish this game…you will keep on playing. The next games in the series, Jak 2, Jak 3, and Jak X, don’t let the game down in anyway.

Jak, being a mute in the first game, first opens his lungs in the second, which is full of gun-blasting-good aliens and hoverboards and cars and a very good story line. The same is with Jak 3, in which I promise you will be glued to the screen and crying at the end of! You see Jak age through the games (See above), and him experiencing his teenage years is pretty damn funny. You experience everything: guns, aliens, otsels, cars, boarding, colour, action, story, and lush scenery which will leave you hungry for more.