Author - Jerry Paxton

Ultimate Gaming Chair products have grown more and more popular in recent years thanks to more mainstream media coverage. In response to the demand for gaming furniture, more and more companies have thrown their hat into the very niche market. Some do it with bean bags, others with low-quality rocking chairs. UGC, however, is the grand daddy of gaming chair makers and you can usually find premium quality in their wares. Thankfully, this is still the case with their Reactor gaming chair.

The Reactor is the lower-cost alternative to their premier model, the UGC ‘v3’. Costing $199 dollars, however, you can be sure that even though its price is not as great as its bigger brother’s $499 MSRP, the Reactor is made from some high-grade stuff. The chair comes shipped in two pieces, the chair back and the chair base. Setup is very simple, as you have to line up the chair back with rails sticking out of the chair base and push. Aside from the basic mechanics of it, you have to connect a couple cables between the two pieces as well, but this is a simple task that even an untrained capuchin with a hangover could figure out. After that, simply plug in the power adapter and your audio input(s). Boom, done.

One thing I loved about the Reactor is that it is not a rocker-style chair. This is a fully-elevated chair that wont break your back every time you try to get out of it. Another benefit to the standard elevated chair design is that you won’t be craning your neck to see the television. The Reactor comes built-in with audio in and out ports as well as a headphone jack. On the same panel as these inputs you will find controls for the vibration motors as well as the chair’s volume knob. The Reactor is equipped with 2.1 channel audio that includes special vibrating motors attached to various points along the chair. These transducers create vibration from base noise which is sent to the chair. You can even use the chair as a massager without playing anything which is a great feature to have. In using it like that however, it makes you wish the chair could recline.

One feature we wish would have made it on the Reactor are armrests. On the higher-end UGC v3 they are prominently featured, but with the Reactor, they chose an open-arm design. While this works with the smaller overall profile of the Reactor in comparison to the v3, it does reduce comfort slightly especially while watching them moving pictures all the kids are talking about.

The sound quality of the Reactor is good overall, but we noted that at higher volumes, the audio would become a bit distorted, although the eight chair-shaking vibration motors do a great job of helping immerse you in the game by helping to make sounds ‘feel’ more powerful then the current volume is set at. Another nice feature is that if you are looking for a quieter experience, you can plug in some headphones and enjoy the chair’s comfort while at the same time playing stealthily.

The Reactor also makes for great party seating, as witnessed at a recent office party with twenty people or so. The chair became the must-sit on piece of furniture in the room. People were talking about it all over the place. So, if you are looking for a solid gaming chair that is a cut above the rest but still not in the completely bank-breaking high end chairs out there you should seriously check out the Reactor. It is available now from Ultimate Gaming Chair for $199 dollars.

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Hidden Path Entertainment has released their highly-anticipated tower defense game, Defense Grid: The Awakening. For those of you unfamiliar with tower defense titles, they generally put you in charge of placing defenses along a predefined route on which enemy ‘creeps’ will attempt to pass by in an effort to attack your home base. These started quite a while ago but in recent years have become extremely popular as casual web titles. Defense Grid raises the bar, however.

While keeping the same tried-and-true tower defense gameplay, it boasts vibrant and well-detailed 3d graphics, which is something that cannot be said about most other TD games. In addition, it features an evolving storyline over its campaign which adds a much-needed narrative to what is going on. Finished, a level can be played from other modes such as sandbox-games, etc which allows for quite a bit of replayability as you try out different tower combinations.

Speaking of towers. In Defense Grid, you will find a vast assortment of tower-type, from basic machine gun turrets all the way to unguided artillery pieces. Each can be upgraded and look sufficiently different in each level of capability as well which is a nice touch. Effects are well done with vivid explosions and other weapon effects. All of these options in terms of which towers to place where creates a big dilemma for the budding player: what to put where? Certain towers play better off one another, such as starting off with a slowing ‘temporal tower’ followed by some area-effect ‘inferno’ fire towers. By learning what each tower does and planning accordingly, your wins will be far more elegant and brilliant to watch unfold.

Creeps are of the anime ‘mecha’ variety and, while not as well-detailed as the environments or turrets, do their jobs nicely. There are light, medium, and heavy creeps to deal with. Some even have shields which are harder to break through. Then there are the air units, which do not always travel on the same path as their terra firma-rooted brethren. All of this makes for a brilliant display of action on the screen as you are not always watching the same creep go by a thousand times in a row.

Available off the Steam digital distribution service for $19.99 (with a current 2008 Holiday sale for $14.99), it would be a shame to pass up this engaging and addictive game. Defense Grid: The Awakening is truly the best tower defense game to date and I hope Hidden Path has plans to go further in the genre as they truly have a knack for it and we just can’t wait to see what they have in store for a sequel.

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Sacred 2 Fallen Angel is one of those games which makes for a very tough review. On one hand, it does a ton of things well and, on the other, has a ton of stuff to be improved on. We shall explain…

At the start of the game, you must select from quite a few options, each of which will tweak the gameplay experience somewhat. For openers, you have to select one out of six different characters to play as. Each of these characters is a different class and, as such, will directly affect your play style. For instance, the cyborg Temple Guardian character focuses on ranged combat with an energy weapon but also has a bladed weapon for close-quarters combat while the Shadow Warrior is strictly a melee-combat class. The cool thing about these characters is that they are well-developed and different enough to make you curious as to how each plays. Each character has a unique voice and personality of their own to boot, from the Temple Guardian who makes cracks at the expense of the game itself to the Shadow Warrior who’s gravelly, dry delivery of one-liners while he dispatches enemies reminds me of a campy Schwarzenegger flick (in a good way). You can select between a ‘good’ and ‘evil’ campaign mode (of the six characters, only three can partake in either one) as well as select a God to worship, each of which shall imbue your character with a special godly ability. For instance, worship the evil god Ker and you will be able to summon a nasty Sakkara demon to help you battle the forces of good, although the god’s hold on the demon doesn’t last long and then you will have to face off with it yourself.

After selecting a character you are treated to the opening cutscene explaining about the T-energy which emanates from within the planet and is the source of conflict in its inhabitants (people fighting for fuel? no way!). This pre-rendered, expository cutscene will give way to an in-game cutscene which introduces your character. After some introductory quests in the gameworld you are let loose to go about your business. Now, we have to say that the world of Acaria is gigantic and will surely provide you with hours of exploration. The environments are generally pleasing to look at with all manner of flora and fauna going about their lives.

As far as gameplay mechanics go, there really isn’t anything unique here. If you have played the aforementioned Diablo II or Titan Quest, you will be able to jump right into Sacred 2. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, as the formula lends itself nicely to these hack-and-slash games and if it ain’t broke, why fix it! Sacred 2 does offer a couple of nice additions such as a button which will auto-loot everything within a pre-determined radius from your character, and the previously mentioned unique ‘god ability’. Characters will gain experience and levels and as they do you will be able to customize them further with unique skills and abilities.

Unfortunately, the narrative of the main quest just gets really lost in the game world and you will find yourself mainly spending your time hunting creatures and performing mundane quests all in the name of getting better gear and leveling your character. If this is not your cup of tea, you may wish to avoid this one. However, if you are a fan of multi-player gaming and love doing those things with your buddies you are in luck as Ascaron has included some great multi-player modes. There are PvP as well as PvE modes, and players can jump in and out of each others games. Spending a couple of hours with your mates killing mobs is a lot of fun and we have to give kudos to Ascaron for their attention to the game’s multi-player features.

While the game looks very nice, it is definitely suffering from some optimization issues. Our test rigs can run Far Cry 2 as well as Crysis (the original) at extremely high detail settings and get 50 to 60 frames per second. In Sacred 2, we are definitely seeing some slowdown. It is not unplayable by any means, but we are hesitant to see how it would run on a lower-end system without turning the detail way down. In addition, there were several times we would crash out of our single and multi-player games for some unknown reason. Then there is the game’s camera, which allows you to zoom in and out and rotate around your character. The problem is that the trees and other structures do not fade or become transparent when looking through them so it is easy to lose your character and select enemies if they are behind or under them.

Sound design is excellent in the game, with realistic ambient noises which really help sell the game world. Unfortunately, the voice acting in the game is often down right wooden. Now, the version we played was localized for the US, so we do not know if the original German actors were more natural-sounding.

Thankfully, none of this will really matter should you choose to play Sacred 2 Fallen Angel in a casual manner with your mates in multi-player. To us, that is where the game really stands out and is a lot of fun. It provides just enough narrative to keep things interesting and plenty of loot for your party to obtain. Unfortunately, the single-player mode can become very monotonous as you do not have the companionship of your mates to help you see past the game’s shortcomings. In addition, we hope Ascaron will continue releasing patches (as they have been) in order to fix the game’s instability and performance issues as the title definitely has a good deal of potential.