Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

Console: Xbox 360, PS3, PC

Genre: Open World RPG

Release Date:  February 07, 2012

Reviewed: March 11, 2012

Gameplay:

Kingdoms of Amalur (KoA) is an open world RPG developed by Big Huge Games and published by EA Games. In KoA you start off by creating your character how you want it and you start off dead. Yes, in the game you are dead but luckily the "Well of Souls" revives you from the dead. The story is crafted by R.A Salvatore, Todd McFarlane, and Ken Rolsten. You may ask that one of these names sounds familiar? Well Todd McFarlane is the creator of Spawn and R.A Salvatore is New York Times best selling author. Ken Rolston created the story for Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. The story is so in depth and is huge. Reckoning is only the sliver of the story. The game starts off you waking up from on top of a pile of corpses because you were brought back to life from the Well of Souls that the dwarves created. You start the game by escaping from an unknown place and a long the way you meet up with some pretty important characters while escaping. KoA has a ton of customizable options within the game. You choose how you want to play, what type of fighter you want to be and whether you want to be evil or good. There are class combinations such as rogue/mage or mage/warrior, anything you want. The game has tons of weapons, armour, skills and professions to customize how you want to play. The main story itself has about 25+ hours of game play but if your the type of person who likes to do all the quests and complete everything the game has to offer then your looking at 100+ hours of game play.

The controls are really easy to learn from using spells or quickly using items. You can map items onto a quick selection option where say you want to assign a potion that increases your armour value then map it for quick use. Spells and skills are used by assigning them to four different spots. You activate these by holding down the "R" button and using X, A ,Y, B. You can also control the camera using the right analog stick or clicking it to make the camera center on your character. The game runs very smoothly and the things you can do are endless. One thing I liked about the characters you create is the option to carry and secondary weapon with you. For example if you were a pure sorcery character you might want to have a staff as your main weapons and chakrams as a secondary. So your attacking with your staff with the "X" button and you decide to switch and up to use your chakrams. You do this by pressing the "Y" button. 

Character Customize Screen....lots to choose from!

KoA has a professions where you can create potions, gems to socket your armour or weapons, blacksmithing and others. You go around the massive world and discover reagents which are used to create certain items. If your a fan of blacksmithing then you may want to put your skill points into it so you can make better armour and salvage from higher quality weapons and armour. When you salvage unwanted weapons and armour you receive materials for blacksmithing. Potions are a bit different. You go around the world and pick herbs which you use to create tons of different types of potions and elixirs. If your more of a rogue then you can also put points in stealth, lockpicking, and detect hidden. Everytime you can a level in KoA you get one skill point to put towards any skill such as blacksmithing, lockpicking, stealth, etc.... Once you choose where you want to put your point you then get 3 class points where you decide what type of character you want to be whether you want to play a rogue, warrior or mage. The last thing you do is decide your "destiny". These are determined by cards and you use these cards to decide what type of class you want to be. For example if you are a pure might character, the more points you put into might you can go up the tier for might fate cards. Tier one for might you will be known as a brawler and will get specials like increased damage and increased block. 

Choose your destiny!

So you've decided what type of character you want to play. What do you do from here besides the main story? Well if you want to see what KoA offers go to the hundreds of side quests in the game. Go do faction quests to become a better thief or mage. The things you can do in KoA is endless. Go do some dungeons, go explore the massive world, go craft something. One thing I really enjoyed about this is the random loot system. Most people didn't enjoy it but I thought it was a great addition. When your looting a chest or a corpse you always get completely random loot. As in you fight a monster and lets say you die right after you looted him. Say he only dropped you 120 gold. Well the next time you kill him he may drop you some armor instead. It's always random. Only downfall to this system is when you unlock a really hard chest or dispell an advanced chest the loot can be as bad as 100 gold or you may get an epic item.

So from the hundreds and hundreds of quests to the huge exploration of the world all the way to professions and completely customizing your character there are a ton of things to do in KoA. 

Graphics:

Another great part of this game besides the gameplay are the wonderful graphics within the world of KoA. The entire world is colorful and vibrant. The wilderness and environment are always changing as your exploring the world and the different zones on the map are all different in terms of the environment. The animations are well done. The spell effects, enchant glows, etc... are all colorful and life like. The water effects are very well done and interact with it's surroundings and environment. As your walking you can't help but wander off in a different direction just to explore the area and see what it has to offer. The bosses are huge and all look outstanding. 

The environment.

Audio:

The music in KoA is very soothing while walking through the different zones and suit the environments extremely well. Then there is audio during boss fights, cinematics and combat that all suit them very well. When your engaging a huge boss the music really gets the adrenaline flowing. The voice acting in the game when interacting with other characters in KoA are all voice acted very well and adds to the feeling of great story telling. The sounds while walking around like the water or birds add to the game that much more. Overall it is very enjoying, relaxing and helps make KoA that much better of an experience.

Conclusion:

I highly recommend this game. This could easily be the years best RPG of 2012. If your a fan of RPGS, Skyrim, story telling, action you will highly enjoy this game hands down. Even if your not a fan of the genre there is bound to be something in the game to suit your needs. From the great combat system, the levelling system, customizing options, and the environments, this is a must buy game. If your still unsure be sure to rent it first. Go out and pick a copy of KoA up, you will not be dissapointed.

Battlefield 3 Beta Multiplayer Review

I myself am not a big fan of Battlefield but I know it is a big game and very hyped up so I am going to do a small review on the multiplayer beta. Remember each section is ONLY regarding the multiplayer beta.

Gameplay:
I am actually impressed with what they allow you to do with the beta. Only one map and one mode is available for the beta but you are able to test and take advantage of all of the unlockable content from ranking up and completing challenges. I personally think they should allow a second map to test out the vehicles as well. They may add it at the end of the beta but I have heard nothing as of yet. So Battlefield 3 is running on a completely new engine as most of you have my noticed. The game is extremely realistic as your running, jumping and even killing enemies. We will talk more about that in the graphics department.
BF3 multiplayer plays the same way as most online FPS's do now. Which is ranking up, and unlocking new items, perks, attachments, etc... What I like about BF3 is that the more you use a specific class the better equipment you will unlock for it. For example, if you only use the assault class and nothing else, you will notice as you kill enemies or accomplish certain challenges with that class you will notice a small experience bar going up with that class. Everytime the experience bar makes it to the end you will unlock something for the class wether is be an ACOG scope or a bipod attachment.

While you are playing you will earn basic experience by killing enemies. You will get 100 per kill. Just like Call of Duty if you do a unique kill or save a team mate or anything along those lines you will be awarded with bonus experience. When you do something say like get 5 headshots in a row you will unlock a ribbon which can be worth 200, 500 or more depending on what challenge you do. Everytime you capture and objective, in the case, defend or destroy the targeted objectives you will also receive experience for that as well.

Anytime you get your experience bar all the way up you will increase your rank. Currently I am ranked 16. The higher your rank the cooler your unlockables will be. Whenever you rank up, the odd rank, you will receive a new gun or new piece of equipment for you to use and customize with your favorite class. Everytime you receive a rank up it will take a little bit more experience everytime you want to go for the next rank.

The mode you are able to play on is called rush. Basically what you do if you defend two objective from being blown up by the enemy team. Each time the two objectives get blown up you get to progress to another area of the map to defend more objectives. As the enemy team your goal is to blow up the objectives to win. With this type of game mode you need a lot of communication. It even helps if your playing with friends. One other thing I would like to mention gameplay wise is the two new features they added. The first one is squads. You can choose to make your own squad with friends or you can opt in to automatically be assigned to a squad. This works well via communication as well as an added option. Say if your entire squad dies except for you. If you can stay out of harms way for a certain amount of time you squad will actually respawn where you are standing. One other feature is the battle log feature. Just like Call of Duty Elite you can track your games, stats, and see recent matches and things your friends have done. Pretty neat.

One more thing about the gameplay is the cons. I understand that this is still in early beta and that is the point of betas is to test out the game and find any bugs or errors. This is my personal list of a few. So generally it is a decent game online, not a personal favorite but it isn't to bad. Some of the bugs I have found is a graphical bug where the screen will randomly flicker while you are turning around or running. Another one that really annoys me is the odd time when you are aiming down your sights, let go of the trigger and try to re aim again, you are unable to do so for a little bit and it sucks while you are in the middle of a fire fight.

Rating: 8/10

Graphics:
So as stated above the graphics to this game are beautiful. They look very realistic and the environments are very well done. What I love most about this is if you throw and grenade or use an explosive near a tree, the tree will actually fall over. Almost everything is destructable in the game so if someone is hiding behind something just blow it up and you will get them. The running and walking animations are top notch. It looks very realistic how an actual person runs and walks. The animations are very well done. The only main issue is that the beta has a few graphical errors which I am sure they will fix up for the release.

Rating: 9/10

Audio:
This is one of my favorite things in BF3. The sounds are so realistic and sound amazing. When you fire a gun it sounds like a gun! When you blow something up, oh yeah, it sounds like an explosive. The running and walking sounds are well done. Even when your running on grass, dirt, water or stone it all sounds realistic. Everything you do in the game as a realistic sound. Overall very impressive.

Rating: 9.5/10

Conclusion:
So as you all know I am not a big Battlefield fan but fair is fair. A lot of people are and this is a really big and hyped game. So I tested the beta and these are my thoughts on the game. Overall the multiplayer from what I have played is pretty impressive. They did a great job of adding in new features and a new engine to the game. Other than a few errors, bugs, and gameplay issues, it is really a great multiplayer experience. I do say this, it is a lot more fun with friends. So make a squad and go have some fun!

Overall Rating: 8.5/10