A Game of Thrones – Genesis, based on the world from the series by George R.R. Martin and developed by Cyanide Studio, is being released both in retail outlets and digitally on September 29.

The RTS supposedly allows you to use both military and non-military approaches to tackle your enemies.

The single-player campaign, which takes you through the founding events and battles of Westeros, was written under supervision from Martin himself, but a multiplayer option is also available for up to 8 players.

What is Valentine’s Day without a little bit of heart?

For the single ladies, it often seems as if we hide our hearts away, behind an inpenetrable shield, protecting ourselves from love and it’s pitfalls. And, for those “cast-iron” hearts, Paradox Interactive has the Valentine’s Day solution: Hearts of Iron – The Card Game.

That’s right – take out all of those feelings of hurt and regret with a good dose of real-time strategy.

Paradox Interactive is another company hopping onto the bandwagon of “online collectible card games”. And for anyone who has had a go at the online Magic: the Gathering collectible card game, you will understand the ideal that Paradox is striving for. Hearts of Iron takes that idea and gives it a “realistic” spin. Players will take on the role of Axis or Allies during the events of World War II, and choose their strategies as they challenge opponents online. The game is being developed internally by Paradox and is the company’s first online TCG.

The game is boasting some good features. The 120 collectible cards use authentic World War II artwork, with 20 more promotional cards added to the mix. There are multiple game modes for the player to engage in, as well as opportunities to build your own deck and trade with other players online through the Paradox Connect system.

Hearts of Iron is scheduled to enter open beta in the coming months and go live later this year. For more information, follow Paradox on Twitter, or check in for updates on their website.

BUY

League of Legends is  the brain child of Riot Games. The game came out of the very popular Defence of the Ancients (DOTA) mod for the real time strategy game Warcraft III,  which for many players is a wonderful experience. With the history aside, lets look at League of Legends as it own game.

Visually speaking, this game is amazing to look at.  The amount of detail that is put into the battlegrounds, the characters themselves, and the special effects are astounding in relation to the fact that this game is free. With so much beauty to behold, it really creates the overall atmosphere of fantasy that Riot Games is attempting to achieve. A few complaints that I have heard from players is the fact that the visual are a little “cartoony”. Of course, the world of League of Legends is a very bright and colourful world, the characters themselves have a cartoon/comic look to them.  A similar complaint was made about World of Warcraft in the beginning — which is where several Legends developers started.  Personally, I think the characters fit well into the world and suits the overall atmosphere of the game.

When you begin,  you are introduced to a mandatory tutorial in which you are taught how to move, attack, buy items and given the overall premise of the game. The premise is that you need to destroy towers in your enemies area, then destroy their base. The tutorial is played on a linear plane and you are talked though your actions by Ashe, one of the characters from the game. I found the tutorial very helpful and it taught me all the basics that I needed to know to get started. The controls are very simple to learn mainly because the tutorial mode is so fluid and easy to understand. Most game control is handled with a quick point and click or with a few keys to manage special moves and attacks. If you are new to RTS or even Tower Defense type games, your learning curve might be a little higher then most but don’t get discouraged.

Upon completing the tutorial, you have the option of playing ranked, arranged or practice matches and all matches are divided into two different types; 5v5 or 3v3.  As a new player you are unable to play ranked matches until reaching level 30. The reason for this is, most players would have a large advantage on a new player in terms of items and skill. When it comes to match-making, teams can be arranged prior to the game or you can jump into a queue with other players to form your own team. I would suggest to any player to to begin by playing practice matches.

Once you are in a match you have to begin at the character select menu. You begin by choosing your character, and your summoner’s two special abilities. These are two extra spells that your character can use. They may be used to heal yourself and your minions, to help fortify towers, clear yourself of harmful effects or just to add a little extra damage. While you are choosing your character, you can see what the other players on your team are choosing also.  After your team has chosen their characters, you begin your match. Unlike the tutorial, the actual matches have three main lanes of travel.  There are also forest areas on each side of the map. The forest area house monsters that help you level up in addition to the the XP you get from the lane mobs, as well as buffs to help you character along the way.  As the match begins, the objective, as I have stated before is to defend your towers and your base with your team.  In order to do this you need to level up your character by getting XP from killing minions or monster either in the lane you are defending, or within the forest. Whenever you get the last hit on the mobs you receive gold.  This gold can be use within the store in order to build better items. These items will each have their own unique ability, and purpose for your character, depending on what character you are playing. The match then continues on as you and your team work together to take out the enemy teams base. Once a base as been captured, then the game ends.

When it comes to League of Legends, there is no shortage of choice.  There are over 60 charcters within the entire game and you are given a total of 10 free characters per week. If you are playing the free verison of the game, the characters you play change weekly. This only differs if you have bought characters  from the shop using IP or Riot Points. Any character you buy remains to be one of your characters, so the weeks that the character is not free, you can still play that character.  This is like a reward for doing well within your game play, IP comes from winning or losing matches.  The other way to get characters is if you buy the game. When you buy the actual game either online or through your local gaming store, you are given a total of 20 characters that you can always choose from. Also, when you buy the game from the store, you are given other extra goods such as Riot Points to use at the store so you can buy other characters that have not come with the game, or skins to pimp out your character.

Another way for players to add customization to their characters is through the masteries. These are three skill trees that you get to put points into. The three skill tree are Offense, Defense and Utility.  These trees can do a number of things from reducing cool downs, time spent dead, or increase things like attack power, mana, health and special spell effects.  Each tree is unique to the type of character that you choose. Since there are so many different types of characters, with so many sub-types, it can be difficult to choose your masteries. A great thing is, before every match, depending on the type of character you are going to be playing, you can change your masteries to suit your character.  In order for you to get points to add to your skill tree you need to level up your summoner level. This is your overall level which is levelled up by the number of games you have played. You get more points for a win and you get extra points for your first win of the day.

Before we begin the discussion of the problems I need to state that I was running League on a relatively older PC. Currently, I have begun to run League of Legends on a much better laptop.  I will still state, all the problems thatI list  for readers I had when running on both computers.

On a number of occasions, the game crashed on me while I was loading the game. During the process, I was still logged in as a player during that match.  In a sense, my team mates during a 5v5 match was missing a player for about 5 mins. For my team and myself, that meant I was started behind in levels. I later found out that connection issues are a problem for other players as well, not  just me and my older laptop.

Another problem that occurred was while logging into a game. Sometimes I would have trouble logging into the PVP.net client, but to others I would appear as a player and people could chat to me but I was unable to join any game. I found that this occurred when there had been an update to the game. Also, I was not the only person that experience problems, a number of players shared my experience.

On the whole, I recommend League of Legends as a game to buy.  This free game was a wonderful experience, that had a RTS player like myself coming back for more, but eventually, you’ll probably want to grab the game for yourself for the extra things that come with it.  The game is involving, diverse, and always expanding in terms of new characters to play or rolls to take within a team. It is a great game, even with its problems and is worth the experience.

ESRB: T for Teen
Genre: Real-Time Strategy
Number of Players: 1-10
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Release Date: March 16, 2010

PASS

The game itself I hate to say is pretty lackluster. The graphics and soundtrack are nice and the gameplay itself is a bit better from the last game, but all in all I just wasn’t impressed. Considering this is supposed to be the finale for a storyline that’s been in the works for approximately 15 years I thought it would feel more epic.

Joe Kucan returns to play Kane, and does a good job of it. The cutscenes were pretty nice and the sets seemed better as well. The soundtrack also lent itself nicely to these scenes accentuating the mood of the game. However in the end these don’t help the campaign too much which leaves you feeling restricted. You begin with a few missions that start off as a tutorial and afterwords are given the choice to side with Kane and join Nod or to side with the Global Defense Initiative (GDI). But instead of playing a polished version of the mechanics in C&C3, we get to play a seemingly rushed mechanic based on capture points, fast unit production and mobile bases. The units are divided by classes: Offensive, Defensive and Support. The Offensive class gets ground units and upgrades, Defensive can build towers and garrisons, and Support can build aircraft and is the only class that can unleash powers on the battlefield.

To me I just don’t enjoy this type of fast gameplay. Granted the quick turn around with unit development was nice and never left me wanting a full squad, I just tend to prefer a non-mobile base. And weird as it sounds I missed the resource gathering mechanics. I also felt let down that the campaign was so short. Most of the focus seems to be on the online co-op play, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But when you want to wrap up a storyline and you don’t focus on the campaign? You’ve missed something big.

You will have to log onto the servers in order to play C&C4, even if you’re just doing a single player game. Not too big of a deal for me, but for some who don’t always have their computers hooked up to the net or who have spotty connections this may not be ideal. But in the end the focus on the online multiplayer shows. The fast and frenzied gameplay that comes with the new controls works better with the online matches where it fell flat in the campaign.

I have enjoyed previous C&C games in the past, but C&C4 really falls flat for me. I would have expected more from a game that’s supposed to be the finale for a series. I did enjoy the multiplayer and I do feel that this is where the meat of the game truely lies, but for fans who have been wanting to see what will happen to Kane I think that they will be disappointed. Honestly I’d pass on this game unless it’s in the bargain bin.

Review product was provided by EA, and does not affect the outcome of this review.

Paradox Interactive released a new trailer for upcoming real-time strategy, Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. After watching the video you may want to become an oil tycoon but the game is not scheduled for release until September 18, 2009. So try to hold off until then.

I know Cherith can’t wait for this title to come out after trying it at E3. Read her thoughts on the game here!

Platform: Nintendo Wii/Wiiware
ESRB: E10+
Genre: Real-time Strategy
Number of Players: 1-2
Developer: Ronimo Games
Release Date: May 15^th 2009 (PAL), June 8^th 2009 (NA)
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Swords & Soldiers website: http://www.swordsandsoldiers.com

Those of you who are looking for their next Wiiware download may be interested to know about this game. “Swords & Soldiers” is being touted as a must for your collection by many sites and magazines, and I can see why.

“Swords & Soldiers” is a real-time strategy game, but for me it was more like a “point & click”. However, considering that most Wiiware releases don’t really make use of much else apart from the Wiimote, I guess you could say they were all like that.

The animation for the game is 2D, and this gives it a light-hearted cartoon feeling. The music and sound effects mainly clear and appropriate for each setting – although you may find instances where you’ll scratch your head in confusion.

There are 4 menu options once you chosen your save file slot: Single Player, Multiplayer, Options, and Credits. Click on Single Player and you get a new menu: Campaign, Skirmish, Challenges, and Achievements.

Campaign allows you to choose between Vikings, Aztecs or Chinese and carry out their stories. All are trying to outdo each other in the power and glory stakes – all of which I have gotten myself stuck trying to finish.

Skirmish allows you to duke it out against the computer, where you can pit Vikings against Vikings and battle each other to the death. You get to choose the size of the map, and in the options you pick what amount of gold, mana and workers you start out with, as well as your handicap.

Challenges allow you 3 choices: Survival, Berserker Run, and Boulder. Survival has you playing to keep your team alive for as long as you can by collecting resources and building your army as quickly as possible to fend off attackers – the longer you play the better. Berserker Run sees you guiding “Arnie the Berserker” across the map, trying to keep him alive for as long as possible. Like Survival, the aim is to stay alive longer to achieve a better score, however the score is determined by how many yards you reach before Arnie meets his demise. Finally, Boulder – I am sad to say I have not unlocked it yet so I am unable to tell you about it.

Achievements gives you the opportunity to have a look at all of the things you have yet to achieve – for instance, there’s one called “Where Are The Kangaroos?” which you achieve by completing a particular Viking level.

Back to the very first menu, and Multiplayer is next. Multiplayer requires 2 Wiimotes to be connected before you are able to choose it. Once you do, you’ll see that it’s just the same as Skirmish for single player mode with the exception of you playing versus your friend rather than the computer. You are also able to pick what colour you want your team to be as well.

Options allows you to change the language, music and FX volumes, and game speed options to your liking. Credits are as you would expect – a roll call of all the ladies and gents involved in making the game, as well as people and places that gave them help and inspiration (e.g. MC Hammer, Matt Damon and Chun Li to name a few). You need to press a button to end it playing though, otherwise it keeps going… and going …

Usually we mention what the female aspect of the game would be. In this game the only female portion I found was in the Viking settings – where they are buxom blonde gold-diggers. Nice.

The team behind this game have done a good job with this Wiiware release – although at times I found it frustrating clicking, waiting, building resources, clicking, waiting … I think you get the idea.

Often the length of time given to gather a certain amount of resources to forge your troops wasn’t long enough before your enemies came by – but, you could probably overlook it with the humorous dialogue used in Campaign mode. Let me just say I would never have thought of making Thor (the God of Thunder, above) speak like Mr T – to quote: “Enough of this jibba-jabba!”

For the majority of this game I enjoyed playing it – that was until I got stuck. I loved the humour in the dialogue and the characters were all unique (including the bratty child Chinese Emperor), although there were a lot of stereotypes at the same time. I would say give it a go, and if you’re unsure then check out some game trailers or see if one of your friends has it to give it a go. Unfortunately there aren’t any demos available to my knowledge.

Brutal Legend

EA and Double Fine finally talked about the last area of the game that hasn’t been spoken about, multiplayer. Some of the press got a hands-on recently but since we didn’t, I can only tell you some details about multiplayer and not how it plays.

Multiplayer will act like a real time strategy. Gamers will build an army to send to battle, but they will also be participating in the battle as well. There are three forces players can select from: Ironheade, The Tainted Coil and The Drowning Doom. Within each unit there are different roles to choose from. Each role has different strengths. There are seven maps that will be playable.

Here are some screenshots that show off some of the multiplayer action:

I had a chance to sit in a demo of Supreme Commander 2 developed by Gas Powered Games.  Supreme Commander 2 is set 25 years after the original game, beginning with the assassination of the newly elected president of the Colonial Defense Coalition (CDC).  The members of the CDC including the United Earth Federation (UEF), the Order of the Illuminate, and the Cybran Nation all deny any involvement and point the fingers at each other which results in a massive galactic war.

This sequel is published by Square Enix and with this partnership they hope to take the RTS genre to the next level by integrating more story elements and characters to the game.  A comparison of the History Channel vs Saving Private Ryan was named as an example – by going more into their lives but still keeping the focus on the strategy and the military.

I have to admit, I’ve not played a lot of strategy games…ok…I’ve not played any, unless Civilization Revolution counts and from what most people say, it doesn’t.  As the demo moved on, I understood why.  First off, even though the game is not polished and is in its earlier stages of development, the game looks magnificent.  They’ve introduced a brand new rendering engine for the game with massive verticality.  Typical RTS games have a rather awkward boundary where you can’t really get a feel for the world around you and here, you have access to all of it. You can zoom into battle right away – as you could in the original game.

They really focused intensely on performance. The demo was run on a computer that was over 2 years old and it looked and performed great.  One of the reasons why I don’t PC game was that I could never keep up with the never ending costs of upgrading my PC which is why I stick to the console.  With Supreme Commander 2, they wanted you to be able to play the game on a 3, 4 or even a 5 year old computer with out too many issues – we all know that there is always something!

We were shown one of the new units in the game – the NOAH Unit Cannon.  You can build units in it and fire them clear across the map.  Another unit was the UEF Armored Command Unit – which is like a giant robot that can be upgraded with jump jets, torpedos, anti-aircraft guns, shoulder artillery, and more.  You can upgrade the head to detach and become an escape pod to fly back to the base to rebuild your Commander.  You can also add Core Dump so that your commander doesn’t become a nuclear bomb in your own base.

There are now three diverse factions – the UEF, the Cybran Nation, and the Illuminate.  They have all been redesigned since the original game.  New designs and enhanced looks along with new tricks that can be unlocked by doing research.  Research is one of the new features in the game to learn more and discover new technology and will offer more playability to the game as well.

The game will be available on the Xbox 360 and the PC and the content between the two will be the same with the exception of the User Interface and they are focusing on making sure that the game will fit for optimal performance.

Seeing that RTS games can go for hours, I was curious if there was a quick play mode and they are working to get games to play on a smaller scale like 30-60 minutes instead of 2 or more hours.  The campaign is run linearly so you play one battle after another.  There is one story and one timeline so that at the end of the third leg of the campaign, you have finished the whole story and have one outcome for the galaxy.

The economy system has been improved so that you will have to have Mass and Energy on hand in order to purchase a unit.  In the previous game, you could purchase units regardless and then there would be a stall in the economy if you didn’t have enough mass and energy.  Now if you purchase something, it is done.

With the improvements to the economy system as well as the readability of the units, the campaign should introduce the player to all the elements of the RTS genre.  The game also features a detailed tutorial for beginners.

They use neural net AI and run hundreds of thousands of simulations in the game and before the game ships , they will do it one last time to educate the neural net with the latest data for balancing and tuning.  The game will have the ability to change strategies on the fly using the neural net versus scripting, as it has been done in the past.

No DLC is planned at this time, although it will be supported, so we will have to keep an out out for new maps possibly.

Multiplayer will follow what was done in the first Supreme Commander.

Supreme Commander 2 will be available in 2010 for the Xbox 360 and PC.

In Majesty 2, you’re once again the King of Ardania, except it’s hundreds of years after the first game, and many things have recently gone wrong.  It’s up to you to build your kingdom back up through several campaigns.  Paradox has kept many of the great things about the original game, like it’s sense of humor.  The heroes still have their own personalities and will do or not do whatever they feel like.  If you’re a fan of micromanaging troups in RTS games, you might find it extremely frustrating when your rangers decide to go home in the middle of an important battle.

While much of the gameplay is the same in Majesty, there are some changes.  There’s a few new hero types, as well as the ability to keep heroes that you like from one mission to the next.  So now, when you’ve got a brave Cleric that decides to take out an entire Wolves Den on her own, you can bring her on in the next mission by using the Hall of Lords.  There’s also some changes in the way that heroes are created – a good example would be with Clerics.  In the old game, there were different types of Clerics, and you built them all separately.  Now, you can start with a basic Cleric, and as she levels up, she can choose which god(dess) to worship giving her new abilities.

Most of the changes are small and if you’re familiar with Majesty, they won’t impede your ability to just jump right into the game.  And for players new to Majesty, this is a great starting point, and the tutorial mission will give you everything you need to figure out the basics.

I’ve been playing the preview build for a few days now, and even though there’s still some bugs, by the time it’s finally released sometime this fall, I think it’s going to be a great gameffffff;">000000;">. If you’re a traditional RTS player, it’s going to be frustrating to get used to the fact that your units can’t be directly controlled, but it’s worth checking out.  If you’re not a fan of RTS games at all, then you might like Majesty 2 because the game is set up so you concentrate more on your kingdom and less on your heroes.  I’m not too worried though, I think Paradox Interactive knows what they’re doing, they’ve got several RTS games on their plate with Hearts of Iron III and East India Company also coming out this year.

To see more about Majesty 2  check out this Q&A from Paradox Interactive with producer Tom Söderlund.

Part One:

Part Two:

Majesty 2 will be release this fall, and available through most major digital download portals.