Gamez Reviewz

Four years after the release of World of Warcraft comes the second expansion Wrath of the Lich King. The game has followed a steady evolutionary process to what it is today with the expansions bringing an injection of new content which brings new players into the game and makes old players return. Wrath of the Lich King did just that with the first few weeks on popular servers resulting in queues. The game itself brings with it an epic feel of new adventure that the end game raiders of TBC had been waiting for. It is also worth mentioning that this expansion brings little for new players until they reach level 68 and can start on the new content that WOTLK brings.

It started for me waiting on the top of a new zeppelin tower just outside Undercity, I was filled with excitement as the boat finally arrived after what felt like an eternity of waiting, and before I knew it I was in Howling Fjord. The first town you land in is fairly impressive with grand buildings and a totally new layout to the standard towns we have become accustomed to. In this first town you can pick up most of the professions at Grand master level. Then you go on to pick up all the quests, the starting zone was a bit disappointing it felt like more of the same and the feeling of your epic adventure slowly disappears. However it does return a short while later. The game has an increased feel of speed to it through howling fjord, you just seem to jump from 1 quest hub to the next rather than being stuck in 1 place for a long period of time. As you progress through the game you get to see more and more lore, and it’s not how it used to be. Now when the lore comes along, with it comes a cut scene or even just NPC’s talking, no more reading the text you can actually sit back and enjoy what is happening. Quests that lead to pieces of lore like this pop up all over the place and add a nice piece of variety to the game. Also adding to the variety are the increasing number of quests that don’t just involve go here collect this or go here kill him or her, obviously these quests are still there but they are mixed up a bit with some different quests that might involve you controlling something like a siege vehicle going down a hill and blowing up whatever you find to complete the quest. You can see that Blizzard have made a huge effort to bring in these kind of quests where ever possible and it does make a huge difference when levelling up, it brings back the feel of the epic adventure you were expecting as you don’t get bored doing repetitive quests over and over. There is one downside to the new content which is the lack of challenge in the quests, 2, 3 and even 5 man quests are doable 1 man, this is not the case with all of them but with most it is. Levelling up is still more fun than ever with brilliant scenery, more variety in quests and more skills with most classes making it overall less repetitive and more adventure like.

When you hit 80 you will probably start off doing heroics which are fun and can be very challenging while your gear is not very good, after gearing up from heroics people who want to raid will move onto the likes of 10 man Naxxramas or Malygos. Your first trip to these places will be enjoyable revisiting some older content and learning some new twists, but overall it is too easy even when stepped up to 25 man the difficulty does not really increase much. Still Blizzard have made some really enjoyable boss encounters in 5, 10 and 25 man situations but at the moment they have really lacked to add a real challenge in terms of end game content. Some will disagree with this as the new achievement system does have some difficult trials such as killing a boss in a certain time or completing the whole instance without anyone dying on a boss encounter. The rewards for doing such achievements can be things such as mount, tabards or even a title. As the rewards from this don’t really give anything new they just give your character some variety like a different coloured mount or a title not many people have, I think there will always be a lot of people who don’t want to bother to get the achievement as its not worth the effort until you get a new item or something that actually improves your character rather than differentiates it from others.

Overall Wrath of the Lich King is a fantastic game that recaptures the adventure in World of Warcraft the new zones are beautiful and diverse with a huge scale, the questing is more fun than ever with so much variation, the professions have stayed the same in what you can do with (as in blacksmiths still make armour and weapons and leatherworkers still make leather items etc) them but have been balanced so each crafting profession gets something useful such as jewel crafters getting stronger gems and blacksmiths getting extra gem slot, similar additions are available for every crafting profession. The lack of challenge is nothing to worry about either as Blizzard has new content planned for the not so distant future which promises to be more challenging.

This expansion does World of Warcraft justice and is a pleasure to play. I would recommend this game to anyone, mmorpg fan or not.

Left 4 dead is a completely new online gaming experience at least it was for me! It’s based around co-operative play where you and up to 3 mates can play as survivors to a deadly virus where you guessed it, everyone who has the virus is a zombie! You battle through each level against hordes of zombies, in which there is the standard zombie and 5 “special” zombies:

1. The hunter zombie that pounces on to its victims and attacks on top of them leaving the survivor at the mercy of his/her team mates.
2. The boomer zombie is a fat zombie that can spew on to the survivors at close range, making them partially blind and leaving them to deal with the horde of zombies that are attracted to the sick.
3. The smoker zombie has a large frog like tongue that can be used to grab a survivor and pull them to the smoker were he can hit them to death. Again like the hunter the survivor is at the mercy of his/her team mates.
4. The tank, and that’s what he is! He has a huge amount of health and strength which make him very dangerous indeed. Depending on the difficulty setting you will only get 1 to 2 tanks per level.
5. The witch, she’s a very powerful zombie; if you startle her she will run after you and take you down with one swipe! (hint: turn off your lights!)

There are also 4 survivor characters Zoey a young woman, Bill an old veteran, Louis an office worker and Francis a tough biker.

There are 4 different scenarios with 5 levels in each with a finale at the end of each scenario. The game has 2 different settings “campaign mode” and “versus mode”. Campaign mode is when you play only as survivors and the zombies are computer generated. Sounds boring and repetitive? Well its more exciting than you would think because each time you play a level the spawning of the zombies is randomized and also the game will choose to give you extra health packs or weapons based on how well you are doing in the level.

You start each mission in a safe house which is normally filled with weapons and health packs. The object of each level is to battle through to the next safe house and ultimately get to the finale to get rescued.

Now you can play on single player and the other survivors will be AI bots which actually don’t do that bad of a job, but the downside to playing with bots is that they follow you and won’t take the lead, which is annoying because when you’re hurt you slow a lot! Playing single player is ok, but this feels like practice and to really get into the game you need to play with other humans as this is when the game truly becomes enjoyable. I found myself lmao on a number of occasions.

This is only the start to the fun though as once you play versus mode you just won’t stop laughing. Versus mode is when 4 human survivors play against 4 infected + the normal zombie horde. As infected you can play as smoker, hunter, boomer and tank. When you spawn as infected you are randomly given one of the characters, which I think is fair and sensible of valve. After each level of versus you swap sides and see if the other team can beat your score which you get at the end for things like distance travelled and health bonus.

Versus mode requires a lot of team work because as infected you need to go in as a group otherwise you will just be owned easily, however going in as a group is a lot more effective.

The thing I have found disappointing about versus mode is the overpowered right click “push away” for the survivor as soon as you get ready to pounce as a hunter you make a screaming noise, which makes the survivor spam the right mouse button which knocks the hunter into a daze. This is fine if the survivor actually aims and hits the hunter but I’ve actually experienced it when I’ve attacked the survivor from behind but because they are right mouse spamming I’ve been knocked into a daze this I think is very unfair and shouldn’t be in the game.

Another point I am disappointed with is the lack of damage the smoker does to the survivor. No damage is done to the survivor unless he is pulled all the way to the smoker where he is in close enough range to be melee attacked. This is almost impossible to do.

There is also a large disappoint with the content in the game, with only 4 scenarios which can be done in no time at all and  which only 2 scenarios can be played in versus mode. Of course there will be updated with new levels but for now we will have to wait and play the same old levels. Also with only 5 different weapons I think the choice is far too limited.

.
Conclusion:

In general I think Left 4 Dead is a great co-op multiplayer game that is really different from the other games out there. The gameplay I feel is unique and very enjoyable. However there are let downs with the lack of levels and weapons, but these things can easily be solved with updates. I think it’s definitely worth buying if you’re into FPS games and want to try something new.