Circle of Doom Goes Gold!

Microsoft and Blueside Inc. announced today that Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom has gone gold!

Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom is the latest installment in the popular fantasy strategy series for Xbox. However, Circle of Doom is a departure from the classic gameplay and instead provides more of an action RPG experience.

Players will be able to explore massive, randomly created dungeons and battle armies of enemies while playing as one of six different heroes in a continuation of the Kingdom Under Fire storyline. Circle of Doom is multiplayer compatible and allows for co-op through Xbox Live.

I'm personally a pretty big Kingdom Unde Fire fan, so I'm eager to get my hands on this latest title. Expect it to be on store shelves on January 08, 2008 for $59.99.

MORE Oblivion

As if Oblivion wasn't big enough, Bethesda has just announced the latest and final bit of downloadable content for their massive RPG.

This last bit of content is called Fighter's Stronghold and allows you to defeat the attacking marauders and become lord of Battlehorn Castle. Here are the game's features:

• A fully detailed castle for you to explore
• Knights of the True Horn patrol the castle and do your bidding
• Secret treasure vault
• Upgrade the furnishings in every area of the castle
• Hire a vintner to create special wines to enhance your fighting abilities
• Hire a combat trainer to spar with
• Hire a taxidermist to craft lifelike trophies for your great hall
• Purchase an ancient Dwemer Forge that buffs your Armorer skill

Fighter's Stronghold will be available for download starting October 15th for PC and Xbox 360. They will be giving it away free for one week, so make sure to jump right on top of it!

I've downloaded all of the Oblivion content now... and as much as I love Oblivion, part of me was glad to finally have the game behind me. Ah well, Oblivion, I can't quit you!!!

9/11/07 Links

I've managed to gather up a few random links for today. Several of the articles were actually published last week, but if you haven't seen them yet, they're still worth a read!

GameBanshee Reviews Two Worlds - They call it mediocre.

TeamXbox Reviews Two Worlds - They award the game a measly 5.1 score.

IGN's Two Worlds Review - Not a particularly high grade from them, but still higher than many of the reviews out there.

GameSpot Previews Hellgate: London - Read their thoughts and impressions on the highly anticipated RPG here.

Heavenly Sword rated by GameSpot - And they seem to like it, awarding it a solid 8.0.

More Puzzle Quest!

D3 Publisher of America has announced that Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords, will be heading to the PS2, Wii, Mobile Phones and PC! It seems gamers just can't get enough of Puzzle Quest.

All of these versions will be appearing this fall and the mobile version will be released in early 2008. This will open the door to gamers who have yet to experience the exciting hybrid Puzzle/RPG gameplay to finally get a taste. Puzzle Quest was the #1 selling Puzzle Game on the Nintendo DS in 2007, and was earlier confirmed to be headed to the Xbox 360 through the Xbox Live Arcade.

The PC and Mobile rights to the game have been awarded to THQ for publishing.

Personally, I'm the most hyped about the PC version, because I thought the early PC demo that I played was superior to the DS version. Either way, Puzzle Quest is loads of fun, so be sure to pick up one of these versions if you haven't played it yet!



Shameless Plug:
Just-RPG's Puzzle Quest Review

Xbox 360 Backwards Compatability Update!

Microsoft has updated their list of games that are backwards compatible on the Xbox 360!

The complete list is rather lengthy, but there are a lot of new entries that have just recently become backwards compatible, including a few of my personal favorites like Morrowind and Kingdom Under Fire. Here's a few of the noteworthy titles:

• Justice League Heroes
• Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes
• Magic: The Gathering Battlegrounds
• Morrowind

Oblivion: Game of the Year Edition Announced

Bethesda Softworks has just announced the upcoming release of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion - Game of the Year Edition.

This Edition of the game will be available on store shelves in September, 2007 for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. It will include all of the content from Shivering Isles, Knights of the Nine, and all of the extra downloadable content.

As an Oblivion fan, I'm personally glad to hear this news, although I must admit I expected it sooner or later. After all, Bethesda did the same thing for Morrowind.

New Ultimate Alliance Characters

Expanding on the already impressive cast of Marvel Ultimate Alliance, Activision has announced plans to release Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Heroes and Villains, an expansion pack for its popular action/RPG.

The expansion will feature eight new playable characters: The Incredible Hulk, Magneto, Hawkeye, Sabretooth, Doctor Doom, Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Venom. Each new character will be unique, with their own signature powers, skins and dialog and achievement points.

These new characters can be purchased on Xbox live in April in two different ways: You can purchase the Hero Pack or Villain Pack seperately for 500 Microsoft points ($6.25), or buy the combined pack for 800 Microsoft points ($10). There will also be a gamer pic pack available for 80 points ($1).

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance already has the largest cast of superheroes ever assembeled, and is the best selling superhero game on the Xbox 360.

Ranting about Fable

If you don't want to hear me ranting about Fable, the hugely anticipated RPG for the original Xbox, then don't bother reading this post.

---Start Fable Rant

For whatever reason, I never played Fable when it first came out. Recently I've had some free time, so I decided to give it a shot. I've heard it was a short game, so I figured I could fit it in between a few review copies.

Anyway, I was pretty disappointed. I'd heard mixed things about the game, so I sort of knew what to expect... but, I really hope Fable 2 is better than this. For a game that was supposed to be THE RPG, the role-playing elements were really shallow and the game length was tiny.

In all honesty, I liked the fact that the learning curve was small and the gameplay was pretty straightforward. That made it a fun game to play and kept it from becoming too complicated. Still, I would have liked the mechanics BEHIND the gameplay to be a bit deeper (like the character building).

Oh, and the lock on irritated me a lot. Not only was it pretty rough to lock onto a specific enemy in a group, but you lost your lock when they'd knock you over. So every time they'd knock me down, I'd get up and be locked on to some random object in the room, and the camera would have left the enemy and I couldn't see where he was or dodge his incoming attacks.

And the backtracking... aaah! The actual world was so small that you end up having to go back and forth to the same few places OVER and OVER again. It was tedious and boring. There was a lot to do in the game, but very little of it did you HAVE to do. On one hand, it's nice to give gamers the freedom to choose, but on the other hand the game was so short that if you put any side questing off for a little bit, you'd end up beating the game before you got the chance to do any of it. I didn't do much of the optional stuff, but there never really seemed like much of a point. The game did a poor job of introducing the optional stuff, but moreso, I just didn't find the game interesting enough to want to continue exploring. As for the side quests, the only real point in those was to make money, which I had PLENTY of throughout the whole game.

I'll take Oblivion (or Morrowind) over Fable any day. The whole idea behind Fable was "For every choice, a consequence". If you want a game like that, go with KotOR or Oblivion instead.

--- End Fable Rant

Sorry about that. Just wanted to get it off of my chest.

As long as I'm at it, here's a link to Just-RPG's old Fable review. It wasn't written by me, but I agree with the score.