Usually, we are nothing but excited with sandbox games. The freedom one derives from exploration can be quite liberating. In an RPG it is also equally nice to have some sort of overall quest which ties the whole thing together. TaleWorlds has decided to just keep with the sandbox part of that equation, ditching an overall quest and thrusting gamers into the unknown.
Mount & Blase features a very fluidic and fun combat system. Every weapon acts as you would expect and, while macro-attributes such as damage and speed are effected by your skills, you will actually have to do the majority of the grunt work in combat. You control every swing, movement, and parry of your character. Combat plays out like a tactical event, picking and choosing your moments of attack carefully while also timing your blocks and parries. Even combat on horseback is handled great. While in some ways, using a mount is helpful, it is also more challenging to time your sword swings and archery shots.
Also cool is the large-scale combat you can find yourself in. By recruiting troops from towns and the like, you increase the numbers in your personal army. At one point, I took part in a battle with easily twenty members per side. 
The battlefield strategy employed in these large skirmishes is vital as one false swing or direction can mean the turn of the tide. Commanding troops is done easily by shouting commands at them. They are fairly basic commands but mirror what a human being would be able to shout while riding into battle. This adds an additional element of realism to the combat, as knights in the middle ages did not have GPS or other high-tech gadgets with which to organize themselves.
Mount & Blade shines like a bright beacon for smaller developers everywhere when looking at the combat system. Unfortunately, where it loses a bit of its luster is in the open-world created by TaleWords. As mentioned before, you are dropped into the kingdom of Calradia which has been broken apart by multiple factions. What you do in this world is entirely your business. You can choose to become a warrior, mercenary, trader, or whatever else you can come up with. While there are quests given by individuals in towns and whatnot, they are not required and will serve only to further your character’s development. This lack of overall story often times leaves the player asking themselves, ‘What now?’
The character development is fairly complex, TaleWorlds taking a queue from Daggerfall in asking you a series of questions to determining your base character. From there, you allocate some skillpoints are off you go. Along the way you level up your character, increasing your skill points and personal wealth.
There are a multitude of armors and weapons to use in the game as well as a good trade system for those aspiring merchants out there. The enemy AI runs from fencepost to challenging, with enemies performing acts of self-preservation as well as selecting their own weapons on the fly and parrying as necessary.
Graphically, the game looks okay. Some scenery comes off as lush and pretty, but the game’s shaders and textures are just not up to modern standards that you will find in other RPGs. In my playthroughs of this game, however, the combat made up for the lackluster graphics. In fact, I wish there was a way to just play various battles out, skipping the rest of the stuff in the game, but I digress…
Overall, we must applaud TaleWorlds for the game’s awesome combat system but must caution gamers that the rest of the game is not nearly as exciting. Not saying that at $29.99 it is not worth picking up, but don’t expect it to be the next Oblivion (although we like M&B’s combat system way better than that mainstream title). Also. the mod community is currently working on enhancing the game as well, so I would not be surprised to see a lot more from Mount & Blade in the future.
Reel Deal Millionaire’s Club manages to walk this line of graphics and budget nicely, as it is the first time I can remember a Phantom EFX game with 3d elements to it. All of the cards are 3d as is your character’s avatar. Yes, you heard me: in this Phantom EFX title, you will actually create a full-bodied, 3d avatar for your player. After creation, the avatar will sit in your ‘place’ at the table game and react to the game’s outcomes in an often humorous manner. I chuckled after losing a big bet in blackjack at seeing my avatar slap his forehead in disbelief. It was as though his small, pixelated mind had bonded with my own. While the 3d characters are not exactly the most attractive Johns and Janes this side of the Mississippi, they are modeled nicely enough, especially when viewed in their ‘shrunken’ state at the bottom of your screen.
Not to spend too much time discussing the graphical overhaul of the game, Phantom EFX has added eleven new slot machines to the game which are not found on any of their other titles. As usual, their video machine UI’s are crisp and vibrant. However, I did experience an odd bug in which the machines were completely silent while the MP3 player was active. Turning the player off unmuted the machines. I expect this and other bugs to be fixed in subsequent patches as is often the case.
Phantom EFX has a new edition of their popular Reel Deal Card Games series out. This one, dubbed the ’09 edition, contains over 80 card games for you to experience. While most of the Reel Deal series has something to do with casino gaming and is marketed as such, Card Games ’09 is geared to the average card player. By card player, I do not mean poker necessarily, although that is included within this game too. I mean the player of games such as solitaire or bridge. Even without it being casino-focused, the games featured in this product all have a gambling component. Nothing ventured as the old saying goes! If you are familiar with Phantom EFX’s previous games you should have no problem adjusting to this one. Their UI’s are consistently friendly and show a good degree of forethought. 
I suppose I would too if someone came up to me with a bone through their nose.
Although the destructable environment was a little bit too easily destroyed, it sure was fun taking that place down to kibble.
The Wizard was a great long range direct damage dealer. While the dogs were doing their thing and the spiders and disease slowly crumbled the undead, the Wizard’s spells simply decimated the remaining remains. I can imagine the Witch Doctor could play through the game without an issue by himself (although, what fun is that?). The Wizard would be a cautious solo artist, taking care to watch mana at all times because when it runs out, you’ll die quicker than a ninety year old smoker.
So with the original King’s Bounty released in 1990, the game’s rich universe cooled its heels while franchises such as Heroes of Might and Magic and Disciples took its place. All of these popular games knew where they came from, and King’s Bounty is even listed as the genesis of the Heroes of Might and Magic series in its third installment! It is now 2008, eighteen years since the release of the original and Atari, 1C, and Katauri Interactive have brought the King’s Bounty universe back to life with King’s Bounty: The Legend.
The combat is fully turn-based and brings a good deal of that old-school gameplay to the more modern aspects of the game which allow it to feel fun and not stale (often times in gaming, ‘retro’ means stale).
**This issue has an update to it in the Live Updates section. Another issue which I found to be irritating is the game’s auto-save feature which does not save your status prior to a battle. I found this out the hard way when I bit off more than I could chew by attacking an undead castle. I was slaughtered and had to load a game that set me back quite a bit. Manual saving is easily done, however the game is so engrossing you will find that you forget to do it!
All of these elements combine wonderfully in King’s Bounty: The Legend, which succeeds in bringing the fun of classic turn-based strategy games into the 21st century, improving on them with modern features when possible. It delivers approximately 40 hours of gameplay and you will probably play through the entire game as each of the character types, not to mention all of the different army makeups you could possible have. This kind of replayability makes King’s Bounty: The Legend one of the easiest game purchases you will ever make.
Oh sure, the preview stuff had looked interesting and sometimes blew me away (the Emotion demo vids for instance) but you can’t always tell when it comes to a Star Wars these days. How are we to trust Lucasfilm, LucasArts, Lucas* when we, as fans, have received such a spotty track record of both awesomeness and lameness? Anyhow, so I start the game and the main theme kicks off with the Star Wars logo. It slowly moves into the cosmos and the title crawl begins. I am already hooked. Why is it that just this alone is enough to fire my geek engine like nothing else? So at this point I am very excited to get past the opening crawl but remember Master Yoda’s teachings and utilize some of this mystical mojo we call ‘patience’ to see it through.
Now, it finally dawned on me where I had seen this character’s face before. I am sitting there and I blurt out, ‘Hey, Starkiller was on BSG!’, much to the funny looks from my two cohorts beside me. You see, Sam Witwer, who played ‘Crashdown’ on the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series is Vader’s young apprentice. He not only voices the character but also lends his face to the game. They have modeled it extremely well and, unlike Kristen Bell in Assassin’s Creed, is very recognizable even without a lab ID card on his bosom. Not only that, but Witwer puts in a great performance and is a total credit to this game.
The aforementioned actors as well as the rest of the cast all put it incredible performances and I can’t think of anyone who came off as ‘wooden’ or unbelievable. The rendering of the cutscenes is equally incredible and makes me wish LucasFilm would have focused on turning this into a CGI film instead of the Clone Wars. And guess what? There is not a single fart joke in this entire beast, imagine that!
The camera will zoom out from behind you and move to some angle to try and frame the entire room in which you are fighting. Problem is, that when zoomed out, it is easy to lose your character (or the enemy’s) when the objects really start getting knocked about. Additionally, targeting between anything becomes more difficult as your perspective is off from your character’s (on which targeting is based). Aside from the camera, levels seem to spottily move from easy to insane in terms of difficulty level. While an increasing scale of difficulty is to be expected in most games, these seemingly random patches of insanity definitely keep you on your toes.
The X5 features a hard, black plastic design, save for the cap pieces which are rubberized, with a rubber scroll wheel and plastic vertical side buttons. The high-gloss, plastic center strip houses the scroll wheel, DPI, and Quick Turn buttons. Not a flashy gaming mouse, the X5 is only equipped with two rear-mounted undercarriage lights. Its minimalistic aesthetic gives an air of dignity to the mouse in a category where gamers often pay more for flash than function. Thankfully, the X5 makes up for its lack of lighting effects with a variable-DPI laser sensor.
Gone are the adjustable weights and interchangeable feet of the original Sidewinder, but they are not missed here in the least. The X5 shows that you do not need those frills in order to be effective in-game.
The keys are a hard plastic that do not feel like they belong. Thankfully, their action is nice with a good spring-back. If I had to suggest another feature on the next version of this keyboard, it would be to add a USB and audio port pass-through, something that is featured on many other keyboards in this price range.
You press this button, located along the top of the keyboard and then press the series of keys (up to four) you want it to remember. Finally, there is the keyboard’s ‘Cruise Control’ functionality, where you hold down the cruise control button and press a single key you wish to spam to your PC. Then release the cruise control button and it will go to work sending that key signal as if you were holding it down. Say you would like to auto-run in a shooter which does not feature such a key. Simply press the cruise control down, tap ‘w’ and release. Your character will continue running forward until you press any other key.