With this week’s PlayStation Store update Sony seems to have gone out of their way to provide gamers with far more content than anyone who has a job and doesn’t suffer from insomnia can handle.  Including several highly anticipated titles, this weeks PSN store update may just (but hopefully won’t) prove to be the biggest week that the service will enjoy.  Now, let’s make with the mind-boggling, thumb-destroying list.

• WipEout HD:  After what seems like a metric eternity,  SCE Studio Liverpool has unleashed their much awaited futuristic racing title for the appealing price point of $19.99.
• Burnout Paradise:  Not to be contented with one robust racing title on PSN this week, developer Criterion has turned their disc-based title into a fully featured PSN title that carries a $29.99 price tag.
• Megaman 9:  Capcom brings back Inafune’s titular little blue manservant for another round of stealing skills from the various and sundry bosses that have co-opted the Brady Bunch’s opening title.  Get down with Rockman for the moderate price of $9.99.  (Or just play the demo repeatedly and imagine the enemies being different for free.  And your parents said that your imagination would get you nowhere…)
• GEON Emotions:  “Bliss, rage, envy or fear … use the power of your 8 emotions to” purchase and play the title that XBL has had for the last year and a month.  You can get in on some GEON for $9.99.
• Various Rock Band songs:  Rock out like Geddy Lee and Neil Peart with Rush’s Moving Pictures.  There are a few other songs too, maybe you’re into them.  If you’re at all interested in this sort of thing you likely already know the pricing.

       There are also a few demos this week including NBA Live 09 and, on the complete opposite side of the spectrum, NBA 09.  As one could likely guess there are some videos that have been posted as well; Resistance 2 and Tomb Raider Underworld top the list.  Backgrounds and such also make an appearance along with a few PSP games that made the cut this week: Untold Legends and Puzzle Quest.  In a shocker to literally no one, there are still no PS1 classics worth writing home about.

       So that’s this week’s PSN Store update.  Please be delighted, and if you don’t mind give us a yell about what you’re picking up.  You’ll likely catch me on WipEout HD.

• AWAY Shuffle Dungeon
• Babysitting Mania
• Cooking Mama World Kitchen
• Major Minor's Majestic March
• Marker Man Adventures
• Our House
• Wonder World Amusement Park
• Zoo Hospital

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach is set for a massive influx of new content.

The Twilight Forge module, released today by Turbine, is set to add some major new changes for DDO players, including an ingame mail system, enhanced grouping tools and quest tracking, brand new items, and the Drow as a playable race. I save the Drow for last, of course, to tweak all the scimitar-wielding fanboys out there. You know who you are.

Players will also have access to new dungeons, and have the opportunity to kill many new monsters from the old D&D universe.

No word on PvP yet, though. Curses!]]> Wed, 12 Jul 2006 10:57:00 -0500 Tim Grube http://www.gamebump.com/go/new_dungeon_siege_ii_broken_world_screenshots http://www.gamebump.com/go/new_dungeon_siege_ii_broken_world_screenshots http://www.gamebump.com/go/new_dungeon_siege_ii_broken_world_screenshots# This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Certain formatting, imaged, and embedded content may have been lost in the transition process.

2K Games has released four first screenshots of Dungeon Siege II: Broken World today for your viewing pleasure. Check them out below.

]]> Wed, 03 May 2006 00:18:00 -0500 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/dungeon_siege_hits_psp_gets_expansion http://www.gamebump.com/go/dungeon_siege_hits_psp_gets_expansion http://www.gamebump.com/go/dungeon_siege_hits_psp_gets_expansion# This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Certain formatting, imaged, and embedded content may have been lost in the transition process.The original author is Matthew Call.

2K Games has signed a deal with Gas Powered Games to publish future titles in the Dungeon Siege series. Two titles were announced, the first being an expansion to the PC game, Dungeon Siege II. Dungeon Siege II: Broken World adds a new single player campaign, a new race, and a new character class system to the popular PC game. A summer 2006 release is expected for the expansion.

The other Dungeon Siege property in development is a PSP game. Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony is scheduled to hit retail shelves this fall and includes an all new single player campaign and ad-hoc multiplayer modes, including co-op. Further details on these titles are scarce, but with E3 just around the corner be sure to check back for more information soon. ]]> Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:18:00 -0600 Tim Grube http://www.gamebump.com/go/updated_dungeon_siege_2_demo http://www.gamebump.com/go/updated_dungeon_siege_2_demo http://www.gamebump.com/go/updated_dungeon_siege_2_demo# This article was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Certain formatting, imaged, and embedded content may have been lost in the transition process.

The folks over at Gas Powered Games have released an updated Dungeon Siege 2 demo this morning. The demo contains the same content, but its updated to v2.2. Th filesize is clocked in at 911mb. Download from one of the mirror links below. 

FileShack]]> Mon, 07 Nov 2005 10:44:00 -0600 The Gaming Horizon Archive http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_dungeon_siege_2_pc http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_dungeon_siege_2_pc http://www.gamebump.com/go/gh_review_dungeon_siege_2_pc# This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Chuck Landry.

Hidden treasures, endless dungeons, magic and sorcery mixed with mighty swords and armor – these are the things that make a great dungeon crawler RPG. Blizzard’s Diablo games are somewhat responsible for this genre breaking out into the popular status it now enjoys, and Dungeon Siege II, like its predecessor, aims to expand and better the experience with a daunting adventure which should last players countless hours.

At its core, Dungeon Siege II is a hack and slash dungeon fest akin to most other top-down RPGs. You spend plenty of time taking on quests to continue the story, running through the wilderness and dark caverns, beating on everything you come across while leveling and collecting goodies such as better weapons or magic spells. And that’s part of what draws me into this type of game – the feeling that you’re always just a couple minutes away from something, be it your next level and thus some powerful new ability, the end of a certain side-quest, or the drop of a powerful new sword from some random goblin. There is constantly something to look forward to.

DSII does of course have a storyline (and a huge one at that). It involves the ubiquitous legend of long ago, when two warriors met. One was yielding a magical sword of evil – the other a magical shield of…good. You know the rest if you’ve seen Lord of the Rings. The two met on the battlefield, the shield shattered, and hundreds or thousands of years later you’re a pawn in the race to collect the ancient pieces and stop the world from being destroyed. Okay, so it’s not the most original plotline ever conceived but like that damned pink bunny with the drum, it keeps going and going. After about 12 hours with DSII, I believe I’ve barely scratched the surface – this game is that long.

DSII was published by Microsoft and developed by Gas Powered Games – brainchild of Total Annihilation creator Chris Taylor. That being said, polish abounds and production values were obviously high for this sequel. And it shows in the finished product. The score is excellently ambient, appropriate, and never overbearing. There is plenty of voiceacting to bring the conversations and story alive, not to mention some lengthy pre-rendered cut scenes. Graphics are also satisfying in most cases, although you have very few options with which to tweak them to match your hardware’s capabilities. Textures are sharp and the range of colors used really infuses the world with character. The artists also made excellent use of particle and other special effects. Spells are obviously a large source of the graphical fireworks, but some of the nicest touches in the game are actually the most subtle. A spell called “ripple” that simply bends the floor around where it is cast for a second is actually much cooler to look at than some of the larger, more powerful damage spells. But all around the game looks great, due in large part to the lighting the characters and world react to. With all of the hits and magic and torches that litter the world, the screen can look like a rainbow of colors, all changing in real-time and it’s wonderful to look at.

You only directly control one person in your party at a time, but the others usually respond appropriately. You’ll be able to add and switch between a few characters at once, allowing you to ensure that you’re never left too far from a specialist in one of the four available classes: fighter, archer, nature mage, and attack mage. Each character in DSII can have skills in any of the four classes, but it’s a much smarter play to only focus on one or you’ll never get your character to be really powerful in anything. Anything you use will gain experience in that field for the character. In other words, once you’ve made an archer, stick a bow in his hands and leave it –he’ll never get the most powerful archer attacks if you keep switching him from range attacker to melee and then magician.

At any time, once you’ve created a single-player campaign, you can use your characters (and all of their progress and equipment) in a multiplayer cooperative session. This is where Dungeon Siege II is the most enjoyable for me. The game doesn’t constrain you and your buddy to sticking together (although it is usually a good idea). If you wish, you can go off on your own side quest while your friend is in town selling and upgrading weapons or on a quest of his own. Although completing a quest for one completes it for the other player, cooperative DSII is like playing two single player games in one world, and I recommend you try it if you and a friend have the game.

The problem with multiplayer is that it can get really confusing jumping between your single player game and the cooperative sessions. You create your characters in the single player campaign and import them into the cooperative game. There, they level up and continue on their progress. If you save and quit, you can come back and continue cooperatively where you left off. You can’t, however, go back to the campaign alone with your now much stronger characters – you must do the single player game starting right where you left it – long before multiplayer. So it’s confusing when you have the same exact character in two different game types, and that character is split into two different entities. The answer? Start the one player game just long enough to beat the tutorial and get the character setup. Right then, host a multiplayer game and import your new character. From then on, always play the game in multiplayer mode. You can host a multiplayer game even when nobody else joins in. That way you can always continue your own game, simply opting to let another player into the world on occasion without ever having to repeat parts of the game or lose progress.

The biggest actual gameplay problem has to do with the artificial intelligence of your party. It’s incredibly difficult to manage more than one person because your party members aren’t always smart enough to heal themselves or replenish their mana with a potion, and there’s no easy way to instruct them without switching to them and manually controlling the action – no easy feat in the middle of a heated scuffle. On top of that, they go running off at distant enemies far too often. Sometimes you just want to draw one or two enemies out of a crowd without attracting the entire horde. But get too close, and your allies might just go rushing into the crowd, ensuring their (and usually your) death.

My final complaint has to do with the nature of RPGs. As large and lengthy as the game is, it does get repetitive hacking away at enemies all of the time, especially when you’re simply trying to level and not actually progress (thankfully this doesn’t occur often due to excellent pacing). However, when 90% of the game is spent left clicking to walk, holding the right mouse button to attack, and occasionally hitting the H button to heal, things can get a bit tedious if you aren’t fighting enemies that actually make you nervous.

Dungeon Siege II is a worthy follow-up to the original, and to the RTS genre as a whole. Its major selling point is the length of time it will take you to finish it – just enough to keep your mind off the impending next-gen consoles around the corner. It is a superb time with a buddy and offers up plenty of variety in environments and skills, weapons, treasures and the like. It is addictive in that there’s always something just five minutes away, but at the same time I found myself easily distracted. The verdict: a solid title for RPG fans – everyone else will enjoy it but don’t lose any sleep if you have to skip it.

AI flaws get in the way a tad and the controls are so easy it can get uninteresting.

Beautiful palette, variety of effects, and sharp textures. Not very scaleable though.

Great soundtrack and satisfying sound effects go along with tons of voiceacting.

Fun because it’s a typical RPG dungeon crawler. Repetitive for the same reason.

Diehard fans might play it twice, but for others there's no real reason to do so.

]]> Fri, 16 Sep 2005 16:09:00 -0500