Also at the Codemasters’ booth during this year’s San Diego Comic Con was a dev-run demo of Rise of the Argonauts, their upcoming Greek mythology-steeped action-RPG. Steve Cornett, a designer at Liquid Entertainment took us through the demo and we send our thanks to him for his VERY in-depth knowledge of Greek mythology which served to greatly enhance what we saw.
You play as Jason, and proceed on your quest to obtain the golden fleece, which is said to have the power of resurrection. On your journey, you are accompanied by the other Argonauts which include the likes of Hercules and Achilles. In addition, you will meet several more throughout the game who will join your crew. What we saw was an awesome display of brutality which reminded us, slightly, of watching the battle scenes of the movie 300.
Combat is reminiscent of God of War only in that opponents often come at you and your two companions (you choose the two you want by your side, usually, when you disembark your sea vessel) by various directions at the same time. Jason will block with his shield automatically as is possible and damage, due to the fact that there is no UI in the title, is shown directly on the characters. With combat being very realistic, you usually do not have to wear down your opponent’s health bar. 
A couple well-struck hits depending on your weapon-type should kill the standard-variety mob. A big emphasis in combat is placed on getting around armor, and in the demo I saw being played, Jason used his spear to counter-attack and take out a well-armored foe. His spear, while not the best against groups of enemies, is excellent at exploiting the ‘chinks’ in even the best armor. In addition, when Jason or his companions score a brutal hit on the enemy, they are often dispatched in the goriest of manners…hehe.
Jason has an awesome assortment of weapons which include the types of a spear, mace, shield, and a sword on his person all the time. There are many different versions of these weapons in each type to be found throughout the game (as there is armor). Unlike other titles, Jason does not ‘loot’ mobs in the game as he already uses the best of equipment. Only items of the most awesome quality (and usually a long back story of their creation and/or usage) are taken by him to use on the quest.
A HUGE element of the game comes from which patron god you have the most favor from. Just about everything you do in the game from conversational choices to weapons you use more than others will affect which god you gain favor in. The patron gods are Ares, Hermes, Apollo, and Athena all have different focuses. For instance, Apollo favors the player with the options of learning more defensive skills while Ares will favor the player by giving them thee option to learn more offensive skills. As such, you increase their favor by using items that reflect that. Using your mace, which is very slow but very powerful, will increase the favor of Ares. You can gain favor in whatever gods you see fit in order to customize your character’s abilities to the fullest.
Another aspect of the game which we liked was the ability to directly-influence the storyline. For instance, after battling Medusa, it is up to the player whether or not to kill her or bring her back from damnation, in which case she will join the crew of the Argos. While there is only one ending in the game, the player can take many different routes to reach it.
Official Page
For those of you who ‘get it’, you know what we mean. And you will understand why we are so excited about Flight1’s Ground Environment X – USA & Canada. Normally, our reviews are very objective and give a good pro vs con argument of a product. Not so in this case. And that is primarily the fault of Flight1, who has such a great product in GEX, it is hard to find a ‘con’ to it.
Enter Flight1, and their add-on to the game, Ground Environment X. GEX replaces all those ‘frumpy’ ground textures with photo-realistic ones that cover the entirety of the US and Canada (yay Canucks!). The difference is very noticeable in FSX and amazingly noticeable in FS9, where the ground textures are considerably worse than FSX to begin with. The textures are extremely crisp and have better organized auto-gen in most areas, meaning that you shouldn’t have trees popping up on top of buildings, etc (although this still happens now and again).
For $34.95, you would be hard-pressed to find any better texture replacement for Flight Simulator 9 and X that has the quality and feature set of Flight1’s Ground Environment X – USA & Canada.
As you can see, the Noblesse K-2 Ebony is no slouch in the looks department. Everything on the front of the case is a button of some kind, and the integrated LCD panel that displays temperature and fan speed (among other things) is a blessing for those performance-minded individuals out there. The case would look equally great in an a/v cabinet or out in the open. It is not only functional but also a good conversation piece. Also included in the case is an ir remote control.
We enjoyed many hours of South Park videos, HD-DVDs (yes we are one of those), and even some streaming vids of the ‘net. The experience was very enjoyable, and the K-2 Ebony was a joy to use.
For an upper mid-level gaming system running a Radeon 4850 or 4870, the K-2 would work great and also turn heads at a LAN event to boot.
The 4850 represents the first of the ‘next-gen’ line of graphics processing units which is pinnacled with the Radeon 4870. The 4850 is the more budget-minded of the two, retailing for roughly $180 dollars. When we first heard the price, we thought that there was no way we would be happy with a GPU like that. We came to the realization that we had believed a video card needed to be expensive in order to be good. Happily, my friends, I can say that ‘axiom’ has proven false in the 4850.
Even with just one Radeon 4850, you will be able to play the latest games at varying levels of graphics detail without issue. We wish the 4850 had the DDR5 memory of its older brother but that is a very minor negative considering the 4870s are roughly $100 dollars more expensive.
The whole point in downsizing the expo was to save everyone money but all thats seemed to happen is that exhibitors are spending more than ever not only on the E3 expo, but their inhouse showings and other gaming events like Leipzig.