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NBA 2K10

NBA 2K10 Full PC Game ISO

Review
by Jeff Haynes

October 5, 2009 - Although EA Sports has held the crown for most sports games, the NBA 2K series has still been the gold standard when it comes to basketball simulation. With excellent presentation values, solid on and off court play (thanks to its franchise mode) and an incredibly rich amount of features, 2K has frequently held off its competitors, who have lagged behind with disappointing installments in the past. With the ten year anniversary of the franchise slated for this year, 2K Sports had more of a reason to maintain their dominance. Plus, with Sony's first party game taking a year off in the development leagues and NBA Live raising the level of its game, the burden was on them to prove why their game was the best around. Fortunately, NBA 2K10 will not disappoint fans of the series, even with some annoying problems that can try your patience.

Obviously, veterans of NBA 2K9 or any other basketball game will wonder about the on-court experience, which is quite fast paced and, for the most part, plays well. One of the most immediate changes that have been applied to the game, regardless of whether you're playing offense or defense, is a revamped turbo, or sprint system. Previously, you could hold down the right trigger (R2 button) to sprint up and down the court, gaining an extra boost of speed as long as you held the button without a fully realistic sense of how burned out your guys would become running up and down the court play after play. 2K10 now adds a new energy system beneath your players, which indicates how long they can continually sprint to push the fast break or get back for that last second defensive play to deny an opponent an easy shot. This bar goes in one of two stages: once you deplete your yellow bar that indicates your sprinting energy, you start to burn off a player's stamina. Depending on how much you use, you may have to rest that athlete for longer times before they get a chance to return to the court. This balancing act between running all out and saving your turbo works well, and ensures that the game won't degenerate to arcade-like speed exhibitions on the floor.

Along with the sprint adjustment comes subtle changes to the playcalling system, giving you the opportunity to call a quick play based on the situation you're currently facing as well as calls to take advantage of a player's position. Instead of the eight plays that you were provided in last years game, you now have twenty four, significantly expanding offensive sets when you're moving the ball up the court. This allows you a chance to fully exploit the weaknesses of an opponent by quickly calling one of four plays designed to get your three point specialist open on the perimeter, for example, or work the ball in to your low post players to exploit a bad matchup. When you couple this with a lot of the other changes that have been included in previous games, you'll get a sense of just how crucial this expansion of plays is to the offense. For example, running a play and immediately using dual player control to set a screen to allow a player to slash towards the hole for a score works incredibly well. The only minor downside with having so many additional plays available is that by pulling up the play menu and then scrolling through with the bumpers (L1 and R1 buttons), you can leave yourself a bit more open to easy steals by being distracted as you try to determine the right play to run.

Now, last year, there was an adjustment made to ensure that the players would definitely sink the easy layups or jumpers that they should be making by being in the NBA. To an extent, this seems to have fallen off somewhat within 2K10, as I found way too many uncontested layups, jumpers and put back shots left bouncing around the rim and falling into the hands of defenders. That is a bit infuriating, especially because this can completely shatter your momentum, which does still play a large role within the offense. In fact, get a player on a streak and you can watch that athlete drain anything he puts up towards the basket, which can totally demoralize an opponent. Along with this shooting issue comes a quarter to half second hitch every now and then when you press the shot button instead of relying on the shot stick. When you're simply moving the ball around the perimeter and the key, this delay isn't too detrimental. Put it on a fast break, however, and you easily give defenders that are a step or two behind a chance to make a play. Whether they have the extra time to try to block the shot or snap into position varies based on the play, but it can be dismaying to know you had an open shot which simply broke down with a feature that's been handled better in the past.

Speaking of defense, lockdown defense has returned for this year, and for the most part is better than it has been in previous installments. While you're still only able to trigger it when the man you're guarding has the ball, it feels a bit more tangible as your defender tries to deny them from easily sprinting around them for a score. Defenders will fight a bit harder for position, and if you manage to guess which direction your opponent is moving, you can deflect them from their original path, leading them into a potential double team or out of bounds for a turnover. The largest issue I have with the lockdown defense is that it's way too easy for a ball handler to slip the lockdown defense without having to call for a pick. In fact, even if you choose the right direction that the handler is going, one or two isomotion cuts and your defender can easily slide right out of position, giving an open look at the basket. In some cases, this isn't the end of the world, as your AI controlled teammates will slide over and pick up the coverage, attempting to block any slashing routes to the basket or the quick jumper from ten feet. Clearly, that can sometimes leave the baseline or perimeter open, but this sliding coverage is only supposed to be there long enough for you to get back into position.

However, the AI can also wind up failing you terribly, leaving the lane wide open without reacting to the ball handler. In fact, the AI frequently demonstrates confusing behavior, such as frequently performing backcourt violations without defenders applying pressure, passing to players that run out of bounds instead of down the court, and extremely errant passes that careen wildly out of bounds. You can be subjected to the same horrible passes as well, since the targeting reticule is so tenuous that a pass to a lined up teammate can suddenly become an annoying turnover, even if you're using the icons to throw to someone else.

One other significant issue that crops up is slowdown within 2K10, which can ruin your timing as you try to set up your offense and run your plays. If you're passing around the perimeter or taking jump shots, this is essentially fine, but once you head into the low post, the game can frequently drop its framerate so badly that the timing of your cuts to the basket can be affected and you can even lose track of the ball. This can be extremely detrimental when the framerate picks back up, allowing your opponent to have an easy score. This really stood out on the 360, and while the PS3 didn't have the same frequency of slowdown, it did have random pauses and broadcast overlays that could stay on the screen, obscuring where ball handlers were.

This brings me to the presentation, which clearly is the stand out this year. Not only do players look extremely realistic, just about every action they perform looks extremely solid. Everything from behind the back passes to diving for loose balls looks phenomenal, pre-game cutscenes look great, and on-court animations overall are great. This includes watching players fight and swim around picks to maintain their defense and tighter, more eye-catching slams. Everything, from the broadcast overlays that take holidays and team schedules into effect to the menu system, is cleaner, easier to read and more immersive.

Another element that is tighter is the expanded crowd reactions to on-court action. Nail a clutch three and the crowd will erupt. If you're the visiting team and you take the lead, you'll hear groans or hear the audience go silent, which will frequently cause the arena announcers to try to get the crowd back in. Bring the game down to the wire and the intensity of the noise is palpable. The smallest downside with the presentation is that the cloth physics will pop in and flutter randomly during cutscenes and close-ups. But, overall 2K10 presents an experience that is closer to what you'd expect from watching a game on television, which is excellent.

Part of this is derived from a new feature that has been implemented within 2K10 called NBA Today, which integrates the latest news, trade info, stats and more to provide the commentary team with completely new conversational topics to cover during a game, making the trio of Harlan, Kellogg and Miller seem more natural and less canned than previous years. Think of it as a blend of Dynamic DNA from the NBA Live series and the 2K Living Rosters feature which is highlighted by the announcers. However, the NBA Today feature has a larger scope than simply refreshing splash graphics during a matchup; it's effectively been implemented across most of the other game features. Similar to the NBA Replay feature found in Sony's first-party game, NBA Today scans the NBA schedule of upcoming games and presents the best matchups for players to instantly leap into for a quick play match up. That means that if a team suddenly goes on a run during the regular season, you'll find their games popping up much more frequently in the quick play section than before. On top of this, the NBA Today feature provides an AI driven "insider" known as the 2K Insider (who looks like a cartoonish version of Stephen A. Smith), who provides blog info and commentary on the league. While much of the continual updates based on the real NBA season weren't fully possible to be evaluated, the past couple of pre-season games have been available to check out the quick play features, and playing through the Association highlighted glimpses of how the stats will play into this feature.

The Association has received a few cosmetic improvements, such as a new facelift for the home page of the mode. However, apart from the ability to customize your draft class and upload or download these via 2K Share, there aren't many massive changes to the feature formula. The largest, and perhaps most significant addition is the inclusion of the developmental league teams, allowing you to cultivate and prepare for your team's future with players that you can call up from these squads. Where the D-leagues play a larger role is within the largest new feature for 2K10, which is the My Player Mode, allowing players to create up and coming stars. After building a player, you engage in various drills and exhibition matches in the summer league and practice squads before hopefully joining a team, with your progress graded after each game. If your skills aren't actually up to par, you'll be sent down to the developmental leagues to build up your skills so you can contribute to your team in your given role.

You can also take your created My Player athlete online, and form new "online crews" with other players, bolstering your stats by playing various pickup games that won't affect your career game schedule but will provide you with extra points. While you're not forced to use these created characters in online matches, bringing in your scrubs to the online court against other players can be extremely useful for everyone involved as they try to build up their player to make a run onto a roster.

In many ways, players might have been given a sneak peek at what this feature is like because of the Draft Combine demo that was released to XBLA and the PSN a few weeks ago. However, if you haven't already purchased this demo, allow me to save you some money, because the Draft Combine doesn't provide you with any significant bonuses that you wouldn't have the possibility to gain by simply purchasing 2K10. In fact, after you get drafted, you'll still have to go through summer games and will more than likely be sent to the developmental leagues regardless of your play, meaning that you're not really gaining any serious advantages by going through this.

As far as the mode is concerned, it's a great addition to the 2K series, and even as a first step, you can definitely see how it could be developed into a stronger, title defining feature. However, there are some downsides. For example, the 2K Insider, who pretends to be your mentor, will frequently chastise you for insignificant items. After one game, I was essentially told that the guy I was defending burned me because he dropped two points on me. Seriously, a coach wouldn't care about those two points unless they were the game winning points and I completely blew my assignment. What's more, while the game frequently will stack your achievements or your penalties during breaks, there are some grades that drop for inexcusable reasons. One time, I called for the ball and was flagged by the game for excessive ball calling. Another time, I was dribbling the ball up the court and decided to reset instead of try to force a score on a defended basket, and was called for holding on to the ball too long. I can understand the reasons for grading performance, but when you're getting degraded for lame reasons, it doesn't go over well.

Closing Comments
With solid, fast paced gameplay and an excellent presentation that's easily the best the series has ever had, NBA 2K10 continues its strong pedigree of great basketball. While the presentation holds down the fort, the inclusion of the NBA Today and My Player modes, as well as the addition of the developmental leagues make an already good title even better. While the technical issues, such as the slowdown and the legacy problems with the AI and shooting are dismaying, they don't completely destroy the on-court experience, which is still strong enough to allow 2K to hold the basketball crown for yet another year.

Hotel Dash.

Hotel Dash. Suite Success (Final, Repack)

Review

When Quinn’s new travel business hits a snag, she needs Flo’s patented elbow grease to help renovate and run hotels all over DinerTown! Experience a Hotel Dash as you deliver guest’s luggage, drop off room service and provide extra towels and blankets! Along the way you will use your tips to decorate and restore each hotel back to its original charm. Watch out for the mysterious mishaps and accidents that threaten your progress in this fast-paced Time Management game!

System Requirements:

PII-600 / 64M RAM / 16M Video 3D, Windows XP/Vista, DirectX 9.0
Repack by yuwik (Prostokwasheno)

Need for Speed

Need for Speed Underground Portable

Review

by Fran Mirabella III

Only a year gone and Electronic Arts is already burning rubber with another Need for Speed title. Last year the publisher released Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, a fantastic racer on the PlayStation 2, but one not quite as polished on other platforms. Since developer Black Box was responsible for the slick PS2 iteration, EA recruited them to develop the next in the franchise.

Aptly titled Need for Speed Underground, it focuses on the custom kit and import car circuit. It is most commonly, and certainly not unfairly, compared to the theme featured in the popular The Fast and the Furious movies. So, it is a definite departure from the world of exotic cars and over-the-top police chases that the series was founded on. It broadens the NFS franchise, bringing a number of things to the starting line that other arcade racers have not. More than anything, it features a robust customization mode that is intricately sewn into a lengthy franchise-style single-player experience.

It's a world of gorgeous girls, rocket-fast racing, stunning graphics, and some of the most impressive vehicle customization ever created. Yes, we'd be crazy not to like it -- and so would you.

Gameplay
Need for Speed Underground borrows, instead of simulating, from the increasingly popular custom kit and import car scene. The days when Dodge Neons, VW Golfs, Subaru Imprezas and Mazda Miatas were just reminders you couldn't have a flashy sports car are gone; in the ever-growing circle of elite street racers, dedicated auto fanatics are turning the mid-range class of almost-sports-cars into decked out, eye-catching street rockets. The underground scene of backstreet, nighttime racers has evolved into a whole new industry. Companies like AEM, Enkei, Jackson Racing, HKS, and StreetGlow provide lines of custom upgrades for otherwise everyday cars -- like the Impreza -- so you can deck them out and turn them into your personalized street machine.

Black Box and EA have gone to great measures to capture this gritty, sometimes seedy underworld, partnering with the biggest product lines and major car manufacturers. It seems its goal was to create a racer that provided more vehicle customization than anything ever seen before, and to this extent it succeeded brilliantly. The flexible car customization mode offers up 20 different vehicles, not a huge number, but with all the different options the variety of personalized cars you can create is in the billions, according to EA. These "Customize Your Ride" options take center stage of the gameplay. Underground's single-player mode is intimately tied into unlocking new parts for your car -- both of the performance increasing and aesthetic variety.

The total gameplay experience is tuned into the 111-objective "Underground" mode. Like a story, it unfolds as your challengers message you via your in-car video display. There are a few FMV sequences now and then, but mostly it is just audio clips and animated heads that deliver your objectives. It works perfectly, however, and is presented seamlessly. To diversify gameplay from just being regular racing as we've seen it before, Black Box crafted a number of different race types -- essentially you have Race, Drift, and Drag. Race is actually broken up into a number of styles, including point-to-point (one long stretch of a track), circuit (multi-lap), and knockout (cars in last place are booted each lap; last car across the line wins). So, there's a respectable variety to mix up Underground's story mode.

It melds flawlessly with the theme and does a brilliant job of immersing you in the "Underground" world. Drag and Drift add a great deal of depth, too, because the physics and driving rules have been tweaked so much that they practically stand on their own. No racers have offered up such a complete, story-driven package. Set up almost like chapters, you usually hopscotch between the different styles of racing, then rinse and repeat. It's a bit formulaic in that way, but it works pretty well. Over the 111 objectives there are special challenges and rewards, like one-on-one challenges to increase your "Underground" ranking on the charts, magazine covers are earned often -- a very cool feature, and more often are new parts and body kits unlocked.

The racing mechanics themselves are all finely tuned, as they so often are in the NFS games, kind of realistically heavy but still adhering to a flexible arcade style. Deadly quick would also describe the sensation of speed. Part of this is thanks to the graphical prowess, but the pace of the tracks is balanced intelligently with the cars' top speeds. Black Box has cleverly integrated some of the elements Criterion's Burnout series introduced like points for near misses, drifts around corners, and overall your style of driving. Based on your performance you accumulate style points, which are basically experience points that earn you new custom parts, the aforementioned magazine covers, and even special pre-made top-end vehicles for use in the "Quick Race" arcade mode. It really is a nicely balanced and tightly wound single-player mode thanks to all these special touches.

For actual racing, traffic becomes an issue as you progress through Underground, which helps to heighten the intensity of racing, but at the same time it can become frustrating. You can't predict traffic and sometimes reaction skills simply won't save you. In a way this takes away from demonstrating your pure driving skills against the AI, which is bothersome at times. But, it forces you to be very cautious around corners later in the game -- petal to the metal simply won't apply. Fortunately, the CPU drivers are programmed extremely well. They fall victim to the same mistakes of nailing traffic head-on and when you try to take them on side-by-side they display aggressiveness. This is another area Black Box balanced well; if you make some mistakes by hitting traffic they won't blow you out of the water and take an uncompromising lead. It also adds to the realism. Many times have we trailed a lead car around the last corner only to see their car take a hit from oncoming traffic and go flying. This adds an intense amount of satisfaction to the racing.In other words, physically, the racing feels great; running AI off the roads, skillfully cutting corners, finding the shortcuts, and driving with some style is all very rewarding most of the time.

The motivation to play Need for Speed Underground, then, is to create the ultimate ride. You get satisfaction from winning races, but there are a few reasons it can become redundant. Firstly, you don't actually tune your car -- there is no setting gear ratios, traction, or anything of the sort that requires of choice. You unlock three levels of engines, turbos, nitro, transmissions, and so on. This is where the "Customize Your Ride" lacks a bit of oomph. No skill or decision making is required. Things like a new Nitrous package (one of the three levels) unlock when you complete a certain one of the 111-objectives. We were disappointed to discover this. It may make the gameplay easier to figure out, but given the incredible amount of aesthetic improvements we were really hoping that tuning would be a highlight of the gameplay. After all, a highlight of modifying these vehicles is being different.

So, by creating the ultimate ride we mean unlocking level-three parts of everything that makes your car faster and better to handle and then designing the aesthetics to your heart's content. Need for Speed Underground focuses sharply on this element, and it is honestly the biggest reason to play. The sheer amount of options is insane, and the implementation is staggering. We started with a crappy green Dodge Neon. It was slow, embarrassing to look at, and just flatly pitiful. But by investing several hours into the "Underground" mode we progressed through the three levels of body enhancements. The only difference with its three-level format is that is it not limited -- when you, say, reach level two of spoilers there are a handful of them and not just one. So it doesn't suffer from the predictability of the engine enhancements. Back to the point, within a few hours of improving our driving skills and proving them, we began to create an incredible looking vehicle. Our Dodge Neon was but a fading memory -- this was a prize, high-octane ride. We got it on covers of magazines, changed the paint jobs and vinyls; began to have a history of cars we once drove. This is why you play -- to be you and to create a truly custom ride that you probably couldn't afford in real life.

But there is a downside. The entirety of the experience is based entirely on wet, downtown metropolitan tracks. It's all bright lights, brick walls, and city traffic. This can make the "Underground" mode monotonous. And because racing can become monotonous, the quest to unlock all the awesome parts and create your stylin' ride is really difficult. We're completely fine with having to work to craft a dazzling ride, but the track designs, which often intersect, reverse, and overlap is not enough. We would have rather seen "Underground" mode travel the world -- race in the streets of Barcelona, Tokyo, some exotic areas that show actual daylight. Hell, the addition of a real-time weather system and time system, where you saw the sun rise or set, would have made Underground near perfect.

Maybe it's unrealistic to think any company could create so much only a year after the release of the last product, but the point is there is still some room for Need for Speed Underground to grow. Replays are another example of what's missing. For a racer, this puts a big dent in gameplay.

Perhaps we'll see a NFSU Underground Vol. 2 that will broaden the experience. Whatever the case, this is one of the best racers of the year and its customization innovations make it worth owning this holiday season.

If you're into the multiplayer scene, Need for Speed Underground is only two-player on all the platforms (if you don't take it online) and allows you to participate in all three styles of racing, including the fresh new Drag and Drift modes. There's an unfortunate catch, however: you cannot haul your customized ride over to a friend's house on a memory card and boot it up to go head-to-head. You both will only have access to the cars that are unlocked with the main profile. Only the online players get to tout their custom rides in multiplayer, it seems.

Despite some of the lacking variety or other things that are easy to nitpick over, Need for Speed Underground still comes highly recommended.

Online
Underground follows in the footsteps of other EA products and supports online for both the PlayStation 2 and PC. In fact, like Final Fantasy XI you can play cross-platform. For a really in-depth explanation, check out this Insider feature on NFSU's online functionality. For an overview, there are a few things you should know.

With up to four-player support over the Race, Drift, and Drag modes, broadband users are pretty much the only ones that will be able to play -- for a racing game this fast there's too much lag otherwise. You are able to bring in your customized ride and stack it up against everyone else's. In fact, enough attention has been paid to online that there are a few special features you won't get otherwise. You can view others' cars before you choose to race them and EA even created a special matching tool that tells you what your chances of beating an opponent are. There are even magazine covers that you can only earn if you play online.

The dynamics of all the race modes changes because traffic is gone from the equation; plus, you'll be dealing with real human opponents so catch-up AI or predictable driving won't be found. This makes online a hugely worthwhile experience. From the detailed weekly leaderboards to the special reputation meter, where you will earn and lose reputation based on who and how you race, Underground's online is fantastic. The only catch is lag could be a problem. In our early tests we experienced some lag over our very high-speed office connections. For a racer, every millisecond behind you may be counts, so be aware results may vary.

Also, since you earn style points in online mode, it's actually a perfect break from single-player because you'll still unlock stuff to customize your ride.

Graphics
There's no question that Need for Speed Underground is one of the most effectively beautiful racers out there. The reflection and lighting models that bounce a dizzying array of colors off of the puddle-ridden asphalt are jaw-dropping. One of the first platforms we saw Need for Speed Underground on was the PS2 and we thought it looked like a high-end Xbox title. As a PC game, if you've got high-end hardware you'll get amazing results.

A lot of this definitely owes itself to the programming talent at Black Box, and its previous experience demonstrated with Hot Pursuit 2. However, a really big element is the tricks it plays on your eye. EA hired an Oscar nominated visual effects expert to consult on the art and lighting. The result, as we're sure you'll agree, from the available screenshots and movies, is incredible. Seriously, the lighting from the vehicles, the amazingly well implemented texture work, and overall effect is dazzling.

Framerates are also much better than they are on the consoles if you have the right hardware. But, all you see are wet streets and nighttime lights -- it's like the engine was created to do one thing really well, but not stray from it. Nonetheless, it provides some serious eye candy.

Otherwise, car models are smooth and impressively detailed (especially as you upgrade them), and particle effects, especially during crashes, are quite beautiful. The physics allow for fantastic, exaggerated slow-motion crash sequences that sends sparks showering the street and the animation that results from it all is gorgeous. Sure, we could have used to see a real-time destruction model, but what is here is very pretty.

Sound
EA Trax strikes back. The publishers growing library of high-profile artists continues to impress. Bands and artists including the likes of Lil' Jon, Rancid, and Crystal Method offer up a huge range of styles from rock to rap. So, while it doesn't exactly try to craft a consistent mood for this "Underground" racing circuit, it does offer everyone something. Also, in usual EA Trax fashion it even has exclusive songs from artists like Petey Pablo written just for the game. Very impressive (even if songs written around game titles is a bit lame).

Meanwhile, sound effects are also very impressive. EA's experts took to the garage and mic'ed up real cars to get the library of effects. There's a lot of crisp metal-on-metal crash sounds, screeching tire effects, and when you Drag race the backfire of your turbo, grinding gears, and NOS sound fantastic. All of this is offered up in surround sound.

You won't be disappointed.

Closing Comments
Need for Speed Undergound grabs you with its sky-high production, and hooks you into its impressively designed single-player mode. The beautiful visuals only heighten your desire to race. But the real kicker here, and the focus of the whole experience, is customizing your ride. If you're not into that element, don't go out and try to buy this as a stand-alone racer. You really have to be dedicated to the car creation, and you have to have the patience for it.

All I see for a title like Need for Speed Underground is room to grow. If this is the ground level, this is a fantastic start. EA could easily craft it into its "Big" series of games if it wanted to, and this would make more sense for the exclusion of a police chase mode -- that's probably the thing we missed most about Underground, as it's a definite side-project for the franchise.

I highly recommend this to racing fans that are into the customization element. Just be warned of the tracks monotony -- the diversity comes in the mind-bending amount of aesthetically different vehicles you can create. Multiplayer, especially Drag mode, is also really entertaining. And if you can get online with the PS2 or PC, you've got a lot of playtime ahead of you.

Crane Simulator 2009

Review

This crane simulator for PC puts the player in front of a variety of different challenges and with the superbly realistic crane simulation the player needs to master them all. Prefabricated houses need assembling, ships need loading, and even bearing structures in skyscrapers need installing. On top of that all of the different parts, like walls, ceilings, stairs and steel beams needs to be placed in their designated places. Shipping containers of different sizes needs to be loaded and various machinery needs moving. The player must also adapt to the different construction sites and use all of their skill to master the work during nightly conditions.

Game features:

After having chosen the difficulty the cargo needs to be placed at the right place at the right time. The faster and more precise the player can finish the assignment, the better the score will be.
With Crane Simulator 2009 you can finally take control of a modern and realistic crane and take your job to a whole new height.

System requirements:
Windows XP/Vista
DirectX 9
2.4 GHz
512 MB RAM
128 MB Video

Planet Alcatraz [SKIDROW]

Review

Planet Alcatraz is a 3D role playing game with isometric projection. The player travels through the game world and fights against enemies in the real-time mode. In a general sense Planet Alcatraz can be portrayed as a non-linear adventure with lots of shooting. Several genres are mixed in this game but despite that fact it isn't stuck between them and appears to be a classical RPG that is based on a specially developed system. The action takes place on prison planet Alcatraz. Its inhabitants are inveterate criminals that were banished there for the life term for their terrible crimes. The main objective of the game is to control a sabotage group that consists of the only one person in the beginning and enlarges through the game. The player has to use all sorts of resources and means to accomplish the mission.

Key Features:

* A great number of key features make Planet Alcatraz unlike other games, but fans of such projects as Crusader: No Regret, Fallout Tactics, Star Wars: Knights of Old Republic, Silent Storm and Rage of Mages will certainly find it very attractive;
* Absolutely unique universe
* Creation of the main character allows changing basic characteristics and appearance including facial animation based on LifeMode technology
* Advanced role and fighting systems developed specially for that game
* Tense atmosphere determined by deep immersion to planet's criminal world
* Modern 3D engine
* Comprehensive dialogue system allowing the player to choose the way of behaving and communication on his own
* Possibility to influence on NPC either in moral or physical manner
* About 100 kinds of cold steel and firearms
* About 200 characters involved in dialogues
* About 80 original monsters, including flying and poisonous
* Cinematic trailers competently interlaced with the story line
* Thrilling non-linear plot line teemed with plenty of keen occurrences
* Fights and adventures with different behavioral and battle options
* Original sounds and music

Minimum System Requirements

Operating System: Microsoft® Windows® XP/Vista
Processor: Intel Pentium IV 3 GHz or AMD Athlon 1,4GHz+
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce 6600/ATI Radeon X800, 128 MB
Sound card: DirectX 9-compatible sound card
Hard disc: 5 GB free disc space
CD ROM: DVD-ROM 4X

Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising

Review
by Tom McNamara

Novalogic has always been known for its military games. While Comanche has been, arguably, the most popular franchise, the Delta Force series has been going strong for almost six years now, recently morphing into the Black Hawk Down license and combining the Comanche flight engine. In theory, it's the best of both worlds, but multiplayer proved to be the big appeal, as single player suffered from poor AI and some frustrating design decisions. Large maps, constant action, and objective-based gameplay with dozens of other gun-toters was pretty nice. Yet even multiplayer had one niggle: no controllable vehicles. This was supposed to debut in the expansion pack, Team Sabre, but was pulled late in development, causing many to wonder when Nova would eventually implement the feature in one of their games. Well, that day has finally come, and this time the action is totally multiplayer, aside from the requisite offline training missions.

Joint Ops brings us to a near-future Indonesia, but the story and locale aren't too important in an MP design to devote much more than, "This is a Southeast Asian tropical environment." You'll get jungles, semi-urban environments, island chains, and fortress assaults, for the most part, on huge maps that support up to 150 people. No, that's not a typo. One hundred and fifty people can play at once on the same map, and the map size and overall stability was solid across the board, although I would have wished for more transport vehicles.

When you have up to 75 people playing on one side, you're going to want to have a sizeable fleet of gunboats, hovercrafts, choppers, APCs, jeeps, buggies, rafts to get people from Point A to Point B, especially when you're traveling long distances over water--the kind of distance that is just not practical to swim. There will be beachhead spawn points you can capture, but you have to, well, capture them (and hold on to them) to avoid making the long trek. And because the damage modeling is so realistic, it's not uncommon to get all the way over there, crawl around for a few seconds, get shot, and start over back at your base. It's also quite easy to defend a beachhead, with a couple gunboats armed with grenade launchers and .50 cals, a few gun emplacements on the beach, and a few snipers and heavy gunners hiding on the ridges and at the edge of the treeline.

Still, this doesn't stop players from trickling in along the flanks, but the most they do is harass the spawn point with small-arms fire and the occasional mortar. A few times I took the job of crawling around in the bush with a sniper rifle and picking these guys off. The enemy will come in with choppers, but the pilot typically simply could not find a good place to land it. This is not a fault of the game, granted, but I flew directly over hot zones several times, and other pilots took a suicidally long time to land. It would have been great to rappel out instead of having to wait until the chopper was close enough for you to jump. And then there's the Stinger missiles, which typically blow up the chopper in one hit. So air approaches are fast but treacherous, and water approaches are similarly challenging because the defender can see you from so far out and peck you to death with emplaced guns, which have infinite ammo.

The maps that stick to ground advancement and combat are much stronger and give Joint Ops a chance to shine. A great gameplay enhancement here is a fast day-night cycle that requires you to use night vision when things get dark. This limits your field of view, but improves stealth immensely. There's still some fairly bright moonlight, but if you keep your head down, you can go a long way to the objective without any hairiness.

The HUD and map design is well done, and should be familiar to those who've played Black Hawk Down. You'll get the compass map in the lower left-hand corner with arrows leading from your spot to the objective. There will be perimeter rings around bases and King of the Hill strategic points, and the game does a good job of keeping people oriented. In the first-person view, spawn points will show up as unobtrusive colored icons, red for rebels and blue for the Joint Ops team. When a point is under attack, the icon's frame will flash yellow. You'll get notifications that a target has been designated for mortar attack, and there's a host of voice macros that allow each side to communicate quickly and effectively. Needing a ride, needing backup, offering a ride, requesting a medic, spotting a sniper, needing a spotter, et cetera, it can all be said with a few keystrokes, and the voice can even be customized to several nationalities and both genders.

Speaking of nationalities, you'll get the full, official outfits for Delta Force, SEALs, Green Berets, British SAS, French GIGN, German KSK, Spetsnaz, Australian SASR, and three Indonesian factions. Clothing textures are almost photorealistically sharp at close range, so the names aren't just there for show--and textures for the whole game are, overall, impressive, especially if you have the horsepower to enable the in-game anisotropic filtering. Once you've chosen your look, you can choose, in most game modes, which class you want to play, which includes Rifleman, Gunner, Engineer, Sniper and Medic. Each one plays a handy role. The rifleman is the standard issue grunt, the engineer has the mortar and Stinger launcher, the medic can heal you or bring you back to life, and the sniper is, well, the guy who typically camps from hundreds of yards away and pecks the spawn camp to death. Character animations are nicely done, and you can also dive into prone by pressing the middle mouse button, which comes in handy with those pot shotter players.

I wouldn't take issue with the ballistics so much, since it's just a game, really--save for the fact that they are explicitly advertised as "sophisticated." Take it from me, though, once you're lying prone with a good view, you can become a veritable death dealer once you get the hang of properly leading your target, anticipating approach, and arcing a little for those long-distance shots. The recoil on a .50 caliber sniper rifle should be considerable enough to make it so I can't plink the target until the clip is empty. And, when prone, scope drift is nearly non-existent. Without wind shear as part of the equation, it's mainly a matter of lifting the sight a few centimeters when you want to get a stationary target that's really far out.

You have muzzle flash and tracers to give away your position, but in this tropical environment, it's typical to be spotted by no more than two people. Make your one-shot kill, climb down from the ridge, and re-position a little farther to the east or west. The guy who didn't die will probably get waxed on his way to you anyway, if he even chooses to risk crossing enemy territory to hunt down a single guy instead of going to the objective. The only way to effectively approach me is to flank from way far out, making the whole sniper-killing enterprise impractical and frustrating. Better to just get in the thick of it before you--oops, killed by another sniper.

Unfortunately, there is a cycle to play which often involves staring at your respawn timer more than actually playing, and by "playing," I mean actively engaging the enemy, not just crawling around or running to where the fight actually is. You can respawn instantly by pressing the Space bar, but that puts you way back at your headquarters. Instead, you're going to want to wait, and sometimes it's only a few seconds. Other times…it's very, very long--and I couldn't figure out what system the game was using to determine how long it should take. It didn't seem to depend on how many times I'd died, or how often I'd died, or how many kills I'd gotten in between deaths. I had to wait 45 seconds to respawn at one point. In the grand scheme of things, 45 seconds is nothing, but on other timers, I could have spawned (and died again) dozens of times within that same time frame. I could have played instead of waited.

What is it that causes such frequent death? It's a combination of things. One is the brutal damage modeling. Sure, it might take only two or three rounds from an M4 to kill someone, but should I die if all three of those went through my foot? Two is the lack of wind shear and generous lack of scope drift, which means people peppering you with fully automatic assault rifle fire when they barely show up even with your sniper scope maxed at 16x zoom. All you see is a flurry of tracers, then you're dead. Third is that there's nothing particularly enticing about being a medic, aside from the warm, fuzzy feeling you get from brining people back from the dead. You can't heal yourself, or spread disease like in, say, Team Fortress Classic. While neither of these would make strict sense in the realism-oriented Joint Ops, neither do the significant benefits the ballistics model gives to snipers. The medic has an M4 but can't even use the 203 variant with its grenade launcher.

The last-but-not-least element that keeps the game from breaking through to something consistently fun is, ironically, the way vehicles are set up. In addition to having no tanks or planes, only the attack chopper lets you operate the vehicle and shoot things at the same time. Everything else is like driving an extremely death-prone bus. And the Stinger and AT4 launchers are so powerful that the passenger vehicles become killboxes if you dare stay inside for more than a minute.

In addition to deathmatch, team deathmatch, king of the hill, and assault modes, there is co-op--but it has some bugs, most notably one that doesn't update your waypoints, which makes the mission impossible to complete, as the objective might not update. We're told the bugs are going to be address in a patch that's supposed to arrive anytime between tonight to a few days from now, but the heart of the game is truly designed for the huge multiplayer environments.

Closing Comments
You can tell pretty quickly that Joint Ops was meant to be Novalogic's answer to Battlefield, and the huge amount of people that can play on one map is indeed a big draw. But the underwhelming vehicle lineup and the overly forgiving ballistics make gameplay frustrating a little too often. I found myself becoming a sniper just to hunt down spawn campers and enemy snipers, and I generally avoided riding in a vehicle over driving one. And even then, I never went for long distances. It would be great to have a five-second-or-so immunity on spawn, so that you can't get clipped the instant you appear by some dude hiding in a bush a couple hundred yards away, and it would be awesome to climb into a tank, jet or bomber plane and lay down some holy terror, instead of wheeling around like a bus driver or hunkering down in the APC with your sphincter clenched, hoping you're not spotted by someone lugging around a rocket launcher. Joint Ops offers some fun, stable, good-looking gameplay, but it won't dethrone Battlefield without some vehicular oomph and limitations on long-range fire.

The Matrix Path of Neo

Review
by Jeremy Dunham

We might as well get it out of the way and tell you right from the beginning that The Matrix: Path of Neo is a whole lot better than 2003's spin-off, Enter the Matrix. It looks better, it plays better, and taking control of the former Mr. Anderson is more satisfying than running around as Ghost or Niobe any day of the week. But more than that, Path of Neo tried to do things technologically on consoles that few other titles rarely attempt. Its Windows counterpart, however, doesn't exactly push the limits of its hardware with a surplus of particles, shadows, lighting effects, and animations... regardless of that fact that Path of Neo has a lot to like in just about every element of its production.

Speaking of which, when industry press first came out of E3 proclaiming that the game had one of the best uses of a license they'd seen in quite some time, they weren't joking -- everything about Path of Neo screams "Matrix" at nearly every turn. Whether it's the cool green coding effect you'll get during loading screens and pause menus or the meticulous recreation of the trilogy's most famous environments, everything you'd expect to be here is here... or at least, everything you'd expect from a game about Neo. After all, the story this time around is told exclusively from Neo's perspective, so the highway chase from Reloaded and the massive real world battle between Zion and the machines in Revolutions didn't make the cut.

But one of the things that makes Path of Neo stand out is that there's still a lot to do despite its narrow character focus. When Neo is trying to flee from agents at the start of the first movie, for instance, players don't just have to worry about running from cubicle to cubicle before making it to an outside window -- Now Neo's escape is a lot more elaborate. He'll have to shimmy across various ledges, avoid agents and police officers next to construction zones, and sprint down several flights of stairs before zooming off with Trinity on a motorcycle. This kind of expanded storytelling bleeds into every other level of the game as well -- especially in the early going, when the brief montage of Neo's facial reactions learning martial arts we've grown accustomed to gets replaced with full-blown playable training levels.

Strangely, the training levels in Path of Neo are actually one the game's biggest detractors. As helpful as they may be, they're the slowest moving and clunkiest stages of the entire experience and aren't a good example of what players can ultimately expect. Unfortunately there are six of these levels in all, and other than the famous battle with Morpheus in the dojo, fail to have the drawing power that most initial stages in action games usually do (thanks in tandem to its lack of aggressive AI, available moves, and straight-forward level design). This is why I'm not surprised that a lot of my colleagues' early impressions of the console versions were overly pessimistic; the inaugural stages of Path of Neo really don't impress much at all.

But that's probably what makes the remaining two-thirds of the game are a more enjoyable experience. Because once you've made it past the dry and uninspired instructional areas, things really begin to pick up (and pick up fast) and that's when Path of Neo's more impressive elements come to light .
At the forefront of Path of Neo's more notable features is the depth of its combat system. Borrowing elements from the previous Matrix title, Sony's God of War, and a heap of other context-sensitive actioners, there's a wealth of moves that players can learn to pull-off before they're finished. Unfortunately for PC users, the system remains far too clunky compared to its console counterparts the whole way through. This isn't helped by the fact that the gamepad support is pretty bad (I recommend the Xbox 360 controller for best results, though) and that it's near impossible to map your controller to the configuration you want. For the most functionality, you'll want to use the keyboard and mouse setup -- but because the gameplay was designed around the use of a console controller rather than a PC (no streamlining has even been attempted), movement is stiff and gauche.

If you're willing to work through the kinks, The Matrix does have some fun moments worth playing. When you're face-to-face with six or seven agents and a couple of SWAT team members, it's pretty thrilling to bust out a sweet combination of feet, fists, and samurai swords. The range of maneuvers you can pull of are really quite spectacular, actually, especially when you consider that you only have fire, strike, special attack, and jump commands to perform a couple of hundred moves with. If executing that many attacks sounds impossible given the configuration, then let me clarify: your equipped weapons and character position in relation to your opponent are all context sensitive -- meaning that while your basic actions may be set to a few dozen combinations, their effect on your enemies will differ based on what you use and where.

The ability to use the "Focus" command also works as a modifier and allows Neo to perform the more spectacular moves from the film. When you combine this special power with your regular limbs, several kinds of guns, various hatchet and sword weapons, and a couple of explosive devices (like det-packs and grenades), the chances of seeing something new and cool over the course of your whole adventure is pretty high. Helping the combat system along even further, is the fact that just about everything within a given environment is completely destructible. This adds a good amount of brownie points to your satisfaction level in the long run, as everything from television sets, pillars, and boxes to statues, furniture, or whatever else can be smashed into smithereens. You can target multiple enemies at once too, and figuring out new ways to chain your attacks so that you can take out as many people as possible in one fell swoop makes for quite the fun time.

Another great feature in The Matrix is its steady climb in difficulty. Despite all of the powers that Neo accumulates as he goes along, the CPU stays with you every step of the way. So while you may gain the ability to dodge bullets or perform anti-grav jumps in a single stage, the next level will compensate with more enemies wielding pistols, smarter agents, or larger stopgaps for you to overcome. I can say with absolute certainty that there wasn't a single stage in the entire game that felt like it threw too much at me too soon (and only a couple of them were on the easy side) and it's obvious that a lot of time was spent working out the little nuances challenge progression. Sadly, this difficulty balance doesn't change the fact that Path of Neo does run into some repetition problems and some weird pacing shifts.

To be more specific, there's a good portion of puzzles and alternate stage designs in between the action bits. One area will charge you with figuring out how to use a crane to crush an annoying rocket launcher guy, for instance, while another puts you on top of slim wooden poles that force you to balance and battle in the middle of a fire pit. There's even a fun little helicopter "on-rails" shooting mini-game to take part in, and an aforementioned stealthy escape mission. As you could imagine, some of these break-ups are forgivable and some aren't, but one of them (a weird Escher-inspired netherworld with an S&M bondage chick and kung-fu ants) is particularly annoying. The whole idea is to navigate through a series of strange "find the right portal" puzzles that can take a really long time to complete and it brings little to no value to the action or storyline whatsoever.
Speaking of storylines, we can't forget to mention that the Wachowski Siblings have given The Matrix: Path of Neo an all-new ending to compliment its broader videogame approach. The pair did write and direct the events of the game just as they did the movies, don't forget, so they were sure to add a finish that was more befitting of the interactive experience. In fact, the moment that the Wachowskis come onscreen to introduce the final stage (and subsequent ending) is easily the most bizarre moment of the entire game and, in a way, epitomizes one of The Matrix's biggest flaws in that it doesn't tell its story very well.

Truth be told, the way that the cutscenes from the three Matrix films (and the Animatrix) are cut together between levels just doesn't make any sense. I've seen all of the above pictures several times each and it was still hard for me to follow what was going on. If you've never seen any of the films... then just forget about it -- you're better off just skipping the cutscenes altogether and pretending there's no story to begin with.

The most noticeable problem of all, though, is found with the visuals. As I mentioned earlier, Path of Neo was overflowing with all sorts of cool graphical tricks like Light blooming, depth of field, and even normal mapping for the consoles, but there isn't any extra pizzazz for the PC. Strangely, it still runs into the same problems that the setup versions do, however, as it frequently bogs down and the framerate slows considerably. This means that oftentimes, you'll be inputting commands into the controller as part of a natural sequence and they won't always happen because the screen hasn't caught up with what you're doing yet.

Amazingly, the framerate and camera problems seem to be more prevalent in the PC version of The Matrix compared to its console brethren... and this is despite the fact that we turned the graphical detail all the way down on a beast of a machine with several Gigs of RAM and a high-end video card. No optimization was made for this additional power in any way by the development team, so even at the highest resolutions, the game looks muddy, washed out, and under-textured. The camera will repeatedly get caught in bad places as well (particularly in the indoor levels), and when coupled with some motion-captured animations that don't always link together so well, makes it really difficult to tell what's going on.

Closing Comments
Fans of The Matrix will probably gobble up the console versions of Path of Neo at retail and it's easy to see why. It does feature a fun and flexible combat engine, a long 12-15 hour adventure, and all the most memorable scenes from the Wachowski's motion picture trilogy. Some of the moves you can perform are just plain cool too (object levitation and code vision spring to mind), while the final boss battle is definitely worth experiencing. But at the end of the day, the PC version doesn't offer enough of an advantage over its console counterparts to warrant a pick-up over those, and even if you're a PC-exclusive gamer its clunky controls, poor gamepad support, and huge install (More than 5GB!) probably won't be worth it. If you're in love with the idea of kicking Agent's smith's smirking digital ass, however, I'd recommend waiting 'till it hits the bargain bins.

Blood Bowl-2009

Review

A brutal team sport unfolding in a parallel fantasy world based on Warhammer and American football, Blood Bowl invites gamers to form a team of players from races including: Orcs, Elves, Humans, Dwarfs and many other fantasy creatures, and launch themselves into battle in the bloodiest of arenas. This strategy sports game combines a fine balance of tactics and bone crunching action.

Features RePack propper:
- Exclusive installer
- Removed commercials / video reaped (quality is not affected)
- Assembled at 1xCD
- Game version: 1.0.1.7
- Enclosing a tablet (serial input is not necessary)
- Set the add. ON
- Launch a shortcut on the desktop

The Settlers: Heritage of Kings

Review

The Settlers: Heritage of Kings is a world-building strategy game with fully rendered 3D visuals and unavoidably addictive gameplay. Players can dive into a detailed medieval world offering a unique mix of RTS and simulation gameplay. A fully functioning community can be created; new advancements can
be discovered, and enemy forces will be repelled!

Expansion Disc
After Kerberos defeat, the Old Kingdom is led by its legitimate leader, Dario. His realm has regained peace since the evil attack of the Dark Knight and is prospering in harmony. But not the whole of the kingdom is peaceful. Rebellions have been reported from a construction site and one of Dario's closest companions has been murdered. A new danger appears clearly on the horizon, and once again it is Dario who has to fight for his heritage and the peace of his country's residents.
Game features include:
* A fresh campaign : Discover a mysterious and unknown land and decide its fate in nine missions
* Original Single and Multiplayer maps: Play on more than ten single and multiplayer maps
* Three exclusive playable heroes: Three characters will fight with Dario throughout the campaign and in multiplayer games- one good, one evil and
one hero who changes from Saulus to Paulus
* Build bridges: This new gameplay feature enables players to build bridges at several points on the maps to gain a strategical advantage for exploiting resources or in battle (stone bridges, drawbridges, plus one special mission bridge).
* Brand-new fighting unit: Riflemen
* Enhancement of landscapes and weather effects: swamps and steppe andscapes create a different, mystical dark atmosphere
* Map editor: enables the player to create his own scenarios

1. Unrar.
2. Install The Settlers Heritage of Kings
3. Install this addon
4. Copy over the cracked content located in the /Crack dir on CD to your installation directory: SettlersHoK.exe to bin and extra1bin SHoKMapEditor.exe to extra1bin
5. Play the game.

Planet Alcatraz [SKIDROW]

Review

Planet Alcatraz is a 3D role playing game with isometric projection. The player travels through the game world and fights against enemies in the real-time mode. In a general sense Planet Alcatraz can be portrayed as a non-linear adventure with lots of shooting. Several genres are mixed in this game but despite that fact it isn't stuck between them and appears to be a classical RPG that is based on a specially developed system. The action takes place on prison planet Alcatraz. Its inhabitants are inveterate criminals that were banished there for the life term for their terrible crimes. The main objective of the game is to control a sabotage group that consists of the only one person in the beginning and enlarges through the game. The player has to use all sorts of resources and means to accomplish the mission.

Key Features:

Minimum System Requirements

Last Half of Darkness:Tomb of Zojir

Review

Usually when I get a game to review, I try and finish it as fast as possible. I feel a sense of obligation to get it played, and get the review posted. Not because the world is hanging on my every word, but because if someone is going to give you something for free that you would otherwise have to pay for, the least you can do is be timely about going to print.

Sometimes I don’t do any of that. This was one of those times.

The sense of obligation was still there, but it was tempered by a touch of selfishness. Or perhaps respect. I have played the previous two instalments in the Last Half of Darkness series, and knew this was a game for hastening slowly. The atmosphere is slow and dark, brooding even, and the experience and exploration need to be in kind. It would be rude to rush, so I didn’t.

All I have… gone with my wife

Tomb of Zojir is a sum-of-the-parts sort of thing. The graphics won’t blow you away, but there is a simplistic awkwardness to them that grabs you and provides just the right amount of strange. Light flickers, things scuttle, or flit, or appear and then disappear. The sounds deepen the mood – from the insects, to the rain, to the wailing – and then the infrequent music adds a fingernails-on-chalkboard edginess. Some images are meant to frighten or shock. Put it all together and you get those little moments of frisson that prickle and tease. Delicious!

It’s a world of swamps, and mansions, and damp and entropy. If it’s all a little strange, then so are you. You, the Stranger, need to restore the bloodstones that guarded Zojir’s tomb and kept the spirit world at bay. But first you have to get in.

When you do, read and collect and listen and think. Take notes. There are a lot of puzzles, and they do not lead you by the nose one at a time. I didn’t find it to be a hard game, but there were puzzles that forced me to reconsider and backtrack and review. A few had compound solutions, requiring solves elsewhere to get pieces of information needed. There were some “doh!” moments, as there often are when the puzzles are well crafted.

I don’t remember feeling cheated by a solution, which is a good sign. Nor did the puzzles feel tacked on, but rather were embedded into the proceedings in (by and large) explicable ways. According to the website, a few puzzles apparently solve themselves after several tries.

And don’t forsake your game paraphernalia. I love getting stuff with my games – the old Infocom games with their many feelies still have pride of place on my shelf – and Zojir’s tomb comes full of stuff. More than that, they aren’t just novelties, but are intimately related to a puzzle. I won’t spoil it by saying any more, but it’s pretty neat. Plus there are plastic spiders!

Violent darkness takes her life

It’s a mouse driven outing, played in the first person. Icons indicate the variety of things you can do. Left click brings up the inventory, right click examines the items. You can combine items, and selecting the correct one for use will cause the item to shake. A map will help you get about.

You can tweak some settings at the initial screens, turning some effects on or off and determining how the transitions work. Saving is straightforward, and overall the interface will be familiar to most adventure gamers, and easy to get on top of for a newcomer.

This game seemed longer that the other ones, but it might just be the length of time over which I played it.

I did encounter some startup issues, and the website says that some codecs have caused problems. The website is full of information to help you if you do strike difficulty, and if all else fails, send an email. I can confirm that you will get a response, and you will get it quickly. And it wasn’t because I was reviewing; I sent mail from another address pretending I had a problem and got just as efficient service.

It comes, I guess, from being a one-man band. WRF is William R Fisher, who pretty much does everything. Tomb of Zojir is all the more impressive for it.

There are some other little surprises which, if I told you about, would defeat the purpose of them being such a thing. Suffice to say that there are many reasons to venture into Zojir’s tomb, and that you will indeed be surprised. Pleasantly, as well as in other ways. I was already a fan of the Stranger, and the Tomb of Zojir only cements my feelings.

Everything considered, this is a game I think you should play.

by flotsam

Year of release: 2009
The Genre: Adventure, Quest
The Platform: PC
Exit Date: October 2009 г
The Developer: WRF Studios
The Publisher: Tri Synergy

The Description:
The ominous darkness has shrouded «the Den of the gipsy» in the city of Shedoukrest. The book which specifies a way to Island of the dead is found. The book, whose pages should be protected by centuries by the eternity. Ancient legends say about the phantoms disappearing in the most gloomy places of island. They patiently wait for new victims - the silly seamen who too close have swum up to a haunt of vice. The ancient treasure stored in depths is visible, and attracts trustful rascals. However not all can to them take hold, as it is protected by darkness - the ancient force living in an old temple of century prescription.

Features of game:
- The convenient interface of management
- Game in the high permission
- Music forcing atmosphere
- Original puzzles
- More than 30 hours of game process

System requirements:
- An operating system: Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP
- The processor: Pentium 800 MHz
- Operative memory: 256 Mb
- A place on a hard disk: 2GB
- The sound device: compatible with DirectX
- A video card: compatible with Direct X, 64 Mb