Alien-X review

Alien-X

Alien X a Superb 3D shooter. You know the score - scientists on a space station have been dabbling with things that they shouldn't, something's gone terribly wrong, and you've been called in to clear up the mess - with the business end of your guns!

In Alien X , armed with an impressive graphics interactive setting, online players are tagged as young space cops who are tasked to find out why communications with the space research station were cut. The mission calls for the player controlling the young space cadet to explore and engage in combat with the mysterious happenings on the ship, all from a first person viewing, similar to that of Doom and Counter Strike.



Yes, web versions of first-person shooters have never been completely convincing - until this one came along, with its terrifying array of growling monsters, firespitting animals and robots that self-destruct if they get too close to you. There are only three levels, but that's still plenty of targets for your pistol, ion cannon and (in later levels) flamethrower and rocket launcher - and the giant fire-breathing chicken is almost as difficult as all the other stages put together.


The game is actually available for download on a trial basis or played online. While the trial version alone would entice a lot of avid players, especially the ones who have tried out the mentioned games earlier, this game is sure to be promising. Given enough time, it will not be surprising once AlienX becomes another game demanded by the avid players.



Controls: W, S, A and D for forward, back, left and right (you can reconfigure this to the arrow keys), mouse to look/aim, mouse button to fire, Space to jump, C to crouch, R change weapon, Escape to pause/ go to game menu.Tips: Use the "Save game" option when you're doing well; try to pick up every key as you go along as you need them all to leave each level; the flamethrower doesn't seem particularly effective at first, but you need to get in close to use it (and, ideally, circle your opponent from a position where they can't shoot back at you).

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Delirium review

Delirium

Delirium is a rotary shoot-out. Nothing too radical here for anyone passingly familiar with the arcade classic Asteroids, but without all the additional temptation of pressing thrust and sending your spaceship flying off in exactly the wrong direction. Plus, it's had a modern graphical makeover and now comes complete with a drum and bass soundtrack. Here, your gun turret remains resolutely fixed in the middle of the screen, fighting off various enemies trying to get close enough to sap your electrical life force, or something.Yes, it's good old-fashioned alien blasting fun, but (especially when it speeds up when the background changes colour) that also means it's anything but a walkover. Controls: Mouse to move turret direction, mouse button to fire, Space (or 1-4) to select weapon.Tips: The homing rockets are handy (and the "Bombs" spectacular), but the Lasers are the most effective against all the enemies, and the fact that one shot can take out several enemies can really increase your percentage accuracy.

Instructions
Use the mouse to aim your turret at invading enemies. Press the left mouse button to fire turret. Press '1', '2', '3', or '4' to select a weapon. You can also press the spacebar to select 'next weapon.' Shoot enemies before they reach your turret. If an enemy reaches your turret, energy will be reduced. Game is over when all energy is lost. A portion of your energy will be restored after each level.Delirium Credits
Developed by: WayForward Technologies http://www.wayforward.com/

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Heavy Weapon review

Heavy Weapon

Heavy Weapon: Atomic Tank is a side-scrolling shooting game developed by PopCap Games and released in 2005.

Gameplay
In Heavy Weapon: Atomic Tank, the player guides a powerful atomic tank through level after level of opposing enemy forces. The tank moves only left and right, while its main weapon, a turret gun, can be aimed up and down at various angles. After blasting through countless enemies on a given stage, a boss must be defeated. Upon defeating the boss, the player visits the armory, where various upgrades and power-ups can be purchased for use in subsequent missions. The game's storyline entails about the Red Star (Soviet Union) invasion, and the player takes role as the commandeer of Atomic Tank to repel the invasion back into the main headquarters of Red Star. The main premise of the game is an anti-communism satire.
The game features a total of 19 levels/missions and two game modes (mission and survival). The game gives various, sometimes insulting messages when you press the quit button.

Weapons
Normal Guns
Nuclear Bombs
Homing Missiles
Laser
Rockets
Flak Cannon
Thunderstrike
Megalaser

Availability
The limited free version of Heavy Weapon: Atomic Tank can be played online at various websites, including PopCap's own site. The full version, Heavy Weapon: Atomic Tank Deluxe, can be purchased for a fee. An Xbox 360 Xbox Live Arcade version was made available for download via Xbox Live Marketplace on January 17, 2007. It features a full (four-player) co-op mode compatible with Xbox Live.

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Heli Attack 3 review

Heli Attack 3 is a run-and-gun shooter game created by the company squarecircleco.[1] and released on June 17, 2005. It is the third in the Heli Attack series of games in which the player takes on the role of a paratrooper who must travel through different locations or zones and use a wide array of different weapons to destroy a series of helicopters, or helis, whilst these enemies simultaneously attempt to harm and, ultimately, kill the paratrooper.

There are sixteen different levels in Heli Attack 3; in earlier levels the helis are comparatively weak with inaccurate and low powered guns. As they progress through the game, the player must take on helis which are more difficult to destroy, and with weaponry that can cause considerable damage to their character's health. There are also a number of purely ground based enemies in the game; in early levels these have either weak weapons or none at all, but in later levels their aim is highly accurate and, if ignored, they pose a big threat to the health of the paratrooper.

Heli Attack 3 has been applauded for featuring a wide range of thirty-two different weapons, nineteen more than its prequel. At the start of the game, in the training area, you start with all weapons that do not have to be earned throughout the game. After which you start the game with 3 weapons. After completing each level you will gain access to a new weapon. All levels (even the training level) except the final level have a weapon that you can get.

There are eight different forms of enemy present in Heli Attack 3. Four of these are the helis which you must destroy in order to progress through the game, and the other four are ground based enemies, two of which will actively attack you and two of which will not. With the exception of holograms, destroying any of these enemies will earn you points and extended use of the time powers.

There are eight different forms of enemy present in Heli Attack 3. Four of these are the helis which you must destroy in order to progress through the game, and the other four are ground based enemies, two of which will actively attack you and two of which will not. With the exception of holograms, destroying any of these enemies will earn you points and extended use of the time powers.

Ground based enemies
Holograms are immobile red and yellow holographic projections, designed purely for target practice in the Training Zone. Rollers are present in earlier levels, and are small wheeled robots with limited mobility and no weapons. Walkers are larger and more mobile than Rollers and similar in appearance to the Drone. Its 'head' section splits apart to reveal a gun that can only fire in the direction that the robot is pointing. Finally, Sniper Robots are equipped with guns and can aim with high accuracy in any direction. They are very low to the ground and are the smallest of the armed enemies.

Helis
Drones, the weakest of all Helis, are small unmanned machines with ineffective guns that can only fly at a set altitude. The Flying Bug better resembles a standard helicopter, and is fitted with a chain gun that can do moderate levels of damage but that has a bad aim. The second most powerful of the enemies is the Small Thread, an angular helicopter with better aim and more stamina that the Flying Bug. It is equipped with both a powerful machine gun and bombs, which cause a lot of damage on contact with the player. The strongest of the enemies, is the Big Gun; reminiscent of the Apache helicopter. It has a highly accurate and rapid-fire machine gun that can rotate to fire large quantities of bullets in all directions. It is also equipped with forward-firing rockets that inflicts a lot of damage when hit.

Excluding the training zone, Heli Attack 3 is comprised of sixteen different levels. These are organized into four groups of four, and one of these groups is set in each of the different Zones; for example, the levels in group one are Zone 1-1 through to Zone 1-4, and those in group two are Zone 2-1 to Zone 2-4, and so on.

Later zones
Levels 1-1 through to 1-4 are set in an alpine area of the Russian arctic, and these early levels are comparatively easy, allowing the player to warm up their skills and build up their artillery against small waves of weak opponents. The second set of four levels are set in the Amazon jungle, a tropical location which hosts slightly harder levels against stronger and more dangerous opposition, where the player must take out many more helis than before to proceed.
Levels 3-1 through to 3-4 take place in canyons located in Africa. The helis in these levels are more powerful than in the Amazon jungle, and there are considerably more of them to be destroyed than there were in the previous zone. The final zone in Heli Attack 3 is set in the underground lab, a secret laboratory which, whilst identical in appearance to the training zone, is supposedly located in Australia. The four levels here are the hardest of all, with large numbers of strong helis that must be destroyed in order for the player to proceed.

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Cabal Online

Cabal Online: The Revolution of Action

Platform: PC

Production: ESTsoft Corp / Games Masters

I was one of the fortunate first hundreds to join the closed beta stage for Cabal Online. I don't know, there is just something about betas that attracts me, but it's especially the fact that I get to experience something first-hand before the game world starts getting crowded.

Unfortunately, even the closed beta was cut short for North-American users because of overpopulation. The number of users ended up in four times the server capacity. I mean, if it's a closed beta, you should be controlling how many people you're allowing in, right? Well, apparently not, so I only got to play for a couple of weeks (especially because downloading the client through a torrent took me days), but it was enough to get a good grasp of the game mechanics and overall feel of the game.

Cabal Online is a very popular third-person Korean MMORPG that is now being released in English. If you have played any MMO before, you will feel comfortable with the interface right away. If you haven't played any MMO before, you will adjust quickly, since the game itself teaches you what to do via quests right from the beginning.

Character creation is a fairly easy point and click process. The interface gives you a good description of each of the available six classes (battle styles). You have Warrior (pure melee), Wizard (pure caster), Blader (which is basically the class that can dual-wield weapons), Force Archer (ranged combat), Force Blader (a mix of magic combat with sword skills) and the one I picked, Force Shielder (blade and magic shield combat).

There are enough customization options for face and hair, but the character creation screen doesn't really explain which stats are the most important for each class, so you're not wasting your points distributing them into the wrong stats.

Although I didn't try the others, I really enjoyed playing a Force Shielder. It’s pretty cool how you have to "summon" your shield before you head to combat, since you carry around a magic crystal instead of an actual shield.

The most unique aspect of Cabal compared to other MMOs is that you don't just push a button and your character auto-attacks. Combat requires you to use your regular attack and special skills, so you have to constantly be pressing those hotkeys. Skills are purchased from trainers, but you are only allowed a limited number of them for each category. If you decide you don't Want a certain skill, you can forget it to make room for another.

Aside from skill combat, there is a complex combo system that requires you to first activate it and then time your special skill attacks for the combo to keep going. If you miss to use a skill when the meter tells you to, the combo breaks. I never got the hang of it. The good news is, you don't get experience just upon a kill: every hit earns you some experience points, and the higher the hit, the more experience you get.

Moving around is as simple as point and click. The game's GPS system already has all NPCs marked on the map with icons and a legend, it will show you Warp Gate locations when you discover them, and it will mark quest-related locations for where you must go or who you must talk to next. There is also a handy feature that marks areas in a color-coded scale according to the difficulty of monsters, so you know not to venture to the red zones. The GPS system includes maps for all the world areas.

During the beta stage, there were three worlds open, Bloody Ice, Green Despair and Desert Scream, but there are eight in total. Each has its own very unique landscape, NPCs and monsters, and you will see how the classes vary from town to town, so apparently everyone has their own starting point set according to the battle style they chose at character creation. To navigate from world to world, there is a room with doors that teleport you to where you want to go. In this room there is also another door that takes you to dungeons.

Dungeons offer you the choice to adventure by yourself or in a party, and many quests require you to go in to one of them and clear every monster inside within a time limit. These are a blast to complete, since they put your skills to the test (especially promotion quests, which you do every 10 levels for class advancement), and as soon as you enter you are accompanied by some very cool rock music.

Other interesting features include an in-game lottery, crafting and item upgrading, which is very similar to the one in Thang. PVP combat is also an option especially on a large scale. Aside from Guild wars, Cabal introduces Planetary wars where a series of new dungeons are waiting to be discovered.

I found Cabal to be a very sharp and beautiful game, especially the detail on the characters and their equipment. The animations are really nice and I spent quite a bit of time experimenting with all the emote commands to see how they moved. They're very fluid and realistic, and I was particularly amused by my character's cheerful dance.

In the end, Cabal Online showed great potential during the beta stage. The originality of the classes and combat system made it stand out, and I'm sure that with time it will be competing with mainstream titles, especially because you don't need a powerful system to run it. Give it a try and see how you like it.

Play it Now

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