It’s hard to mix life and video games, they always seem to interfere with each other. Whenever something happens in real life, something in the gaming world happens. Christmas? Whoops, a huge amount of games just got released. A party? Whoops, your weekly World of Warcraft raid is that night. Exams? Whoops, Valve just released an enormous update for Team Fortress 2. Because every gamer faces these problems, here are some tips to keep a healthy balance between gaming and your life.

Tip 1
Limit the amount of games you’ll play. For example, say “This week I’m only going to play Left4Dead, Valkyria Chronicles and Super Smash Bros. Brawl.” This way, you won’t get swarmed by the huge amount of options when trying to decide which game you’ll play. Normally, you might think “I can’t do that, I’ve got no time, too many games to play”. But if you limit the amount of games, these thoughts won’t pop up. This is also very useful during the holiday season, with so many games coming out.

Tip 2
Spend less time on forums. This is especially useful for people like me, who can spend hours reading forums related to gaming. Whenever I pick up a game, I’ll also start reading forums related to it. Started playing Pokémon again? You can find me on Smogon. Taking a break from playing a lot of Team Fortress 2? Good chance I’ll be on the Valve TF2 forums. There is really hardly any gain from reading forums, so you save a lot of time by not doing so, and you can use this valuable time to do more useful things, like getting a job, or just playing more games.

Tip 3
You’re not forced to play everything right after it comes out, it can wait a while. Getting swarmed by games during holiday season? Pick up one or two, and just wait for a while before playing the other. New content just came out for your favorite MMO? Well, if you wait for a week before playing it, you can have just as much fun, and not everybody in the world will be trying to enjoy the same area at the same time. Even if you wait some time, the game or content will stay exactly the same, so there’s no reason not to wait. Team Fortress 2 is not fun with 10 medics on your team, and playing an MMO is not fun if there simply aren’t enough monsters to meet the demand. If it’s a single-player game, if you wait a while, the price will drop, and you’ll have more money to spend on other things; or, if the game is in high demand, you don’t have to stand in the cold waiting for midnight to be able to pick it up.

So there are lots of ways to make sure you have a better mixture of real life and gaming. It’s not necessary to drop it completely, as some would like you to believe. Keep these three tips in mind, the next time you have to make a decision between gaming and your life.

There is a popular Dutch gaming magazine I like to read. The reason why I like the magazine so much is because the articles and reviews always feel like they were written with passion, a passion for gaming that is. Some game journalists don’t have a passion for gaming, but for journalism. While their form may be good, their reviews are worthless.

The game magazine I’m talking about gave Super Mario Galaxy a 100. A perfect score. Of course, you don’t hand out a perfect score every day, so the reviewer felt like he had to give his view on the matter.
Here is the (translated) transcript:

“My admiration for this game is based on both objective as subjective grounds. For me the mark 100 is the best mark that can express everything that Galaxy has to offer. I don’t care for crap about perfect games existing or not existing, because you have to assume for this that there is an objective method to measure one’s fun while playing a game, and I don’t, because I’m a practical person. Besides, Super Mario Galaxy is just a perfect game.”

This got me thinking, maybe we are looking at reviews in the wrong way. Too many reviewers look at games as a summation of different factors: graphics, sound, story, etc. But that isn’t what games are about. Games can have an awful story, but still be a lot of fun. The same goes for graphics. Could Super Mario Galaxy have been improved? Yeah, maybe it could’ve had a better story, or maybe the final boss could’ve been better, or maybe less of the music could’ve been MIDIs. But would these improvements make the game more fun? No, they wouldn’t. While an RPG may benefit from a better story, SMG wouldn’t have been more fun to play, and that is what really matters.

Last issue, the magazine gave LittleBigPlanet a perfect 100. The reviewer wrote the following:

“You might be wondering after reading this review why the hell we gave this score of 100 points, but it is exceptionally hard to explain how hard it is to explain this game. The amount of fun we had is hard to put on paper.”

The reviewer then proceeded to try and explain just how much fun they had playing the game. And that’s what games are about, aren’t they? Fun.

And that’s what we should care about in games. Not graphics. Not sound. Not whether it’s bugfree. It’s whether it’s fun or not. If a game has terrible graphics, it can still be fun. If it has some crazy bugs, it can still be fun. If your guns make odd and wacky sounds, the game can still be fun. And fun is what’s important in a hobby.

I recently started playing the American open beta of a game called Runes of Magic. And it looks like the game will be a big hit.

Runes of Magic is an MMORPG that is free to play, and the American open beta was recently opened. There was already a European open beta going on, so most of  the bugs have already been taken care of.

You start out with one of six classes in the Pioneer’s Colony of Taborea, where you’ll quickly become familiar with Runes of Magic (RoM). After a mini-tutorial, which explains the bare basics of the game, like movement and camera control, you’re thrown into the world. And boy,was I surprised. On my skill bar, I found 4 skills waiting for me! At level 1!

While other games are scarce with giving you skills, RoM is definitely not. A common complaint about MMOs is that you have so little skills to use, that you just end up spamming the same skill over and over again, making the game very boring. But not in RoM. You start out with a couple of skills that have synergy with each other, and every level you get to upgrade them as you wish. You also gain a new skills every level or two. And this makes the combat really enjoyable.

The other thing that really surprised me, is how the game kept throwing quest after quest at me. There are so many, especially with the daily quests that you can repeat, that it’s not odd to still have quests of levels far below yours! So you’ll never be forced to grind on your own, but instead you’ll be questing.

However, these quests don’t have a lot of variety. Most of them are simple “Kill x wolves” or “Collect 10 fangs”, though there’s also some quests that ask you to scavenge for items or kill bosses (that are way too strong for their level, I might add- you definitely need a group of multiple people to kill them).

Aside from the combat there’s also a foraging and crafting system. While the foraging system is straight-forward (though it’s annoying how you cannot chop down certain trees or pick flowers until your skill level is high enough), the crafting system is not. I didn’t find out until level 10 how I could create new items, because you have to initiate the crafting from your skill window. Because of this, I accidentally sold a lot of materials that I could have instead used to create new items.

A unique feature in Runes of Magic is that, like Guild Wars, you can gain a secondary class. At level 10 you can choose one of the remaining classes as your secondary, and you get to use some of its skills. However, unlike Guild Wars, you separately have to level this class. I’m a big fan of the dual class system, as it allows for a lot more variety.

For now, I’m really enjoying Runes of Magic, and I hope this game stays as good as it is in the lower levels. If you’re looking for a free MMO, definitely try this game.

You’re stranded in a city full of infected, you’re the only survivor you know. What should you do to survive? Here are 5 tips to make sure you survive a zombie infection in the universe of Left4Dead.

Tip 5

Find plenty of guns, and plenty of ammo. Guns kill infected. Since there are stacks of infinite ammo scattered across the city, definitely use them. You’ll never know what you’re up against. Also, don’t forget to find a second pistol, which can probably be found on a random car in the neighborhood.

Tip 4
Find other survivors. The more, the merrier. Furthermore, you can use other people’s bodies to run away and survive, if it has to come to that. Oh, and they can also help you if you’re friendly to them, which is probably a better option. Otherwise they’ll leave you alone with zombies ripping your guts out.

Tip 3
Get some exercise. Seriously, you’ll be running all day long. If you don’t have any stamina, well, good luck. Don’t forget there’s an infinite amount of zombies. And you don’t want to be left behind by the others because you’re so tired while there are 20 zombies coming from behind.

Tip 2
Take a lot of pipebombs with you. They’re the white things that you can throw and they go boom. For some reason you can find them everywhere. Don’t just take one, stuff your pockets with them. You don’t want to be left without any pipebombs as there’s a zombie raid coming after you.

Tip 1
Find Chicago Ted. No zombie is safe from Chicago Ted. If a smoker grabs him, he rips his tongue out and uses it as a lasso. If he meets a tank, the tank will run away in fear. If a witch startles Chicago Ted, that witch is dead. If you find him, you’ll be sure to survive all zombies you encounter.

Square Enix released a trailer for the mysterious Final Fantasy XIII Versus. And to be honest? It looks amazing.

The grahics are breathtaking: It’s like you’re watching a live-action movie. The shadows, the reflections, it’s amazing. But really, Square-Enix, can’t you tell us something about the actual game?

This trailer is similar to your average action-movie trailer. There’s a lot of flashing pictures, a hint at romance, the main character looking cool, and a lot of spectacular special effects. But you still don’t know anything about the movie. You have no idea whether it’s good or not. You have a slight idea what the plot is about, but nothing more than that. And you have no idea whether the movie is good or not.

What did we learn from this extended trailer? Well, the cutscenes look amazing. And we have four guys very much in touch with their feminine side. And a car. Oh, and some random girl shows up.

But we still don’t know anything about the actual gameplay. And that is what a game is about, not how pretty the graphics are. The fighting scene is obviously not how the actual gameplay works,  so we’re still absolutely clueless.

Will there be party members? Will there be spells, or mechanics similar to them, like in the regular Final Fantasy series? Will the gameplay be button mashing?

Please, Square Enix. Don’t just throw some pretty graphics at us. Tell us about the actual game. The thing that will keep most players busy, not the pretty graphics.

You can download the trailer here

So, the PC version has been hit with a new update for Team Fortress 2. Sadly, 360 users will have to wait for a while before they get all the content we’ve been enjoying so far, but at least it’s been confirmed that it’s coming on the Team Fortress website.

We’ve had a couple days to play with this update now, and we can already see some effects on the game.

The most important change in this update is the ability to upgrade the Engineer’s Dispenser and Teleporters. While they were always operating on level 1, they can now go up to level 3.

And oh boy, is it a big change. A level 3 dispenser gives out a whopping 60 metal every tick, and heals as fast as a medic. A level 3 teleporter as a very quick recharge time, I estimate it to be about 3~5 seconds. This is a huge improvement over the old level 1 teleporters.

But now, the engineer is faced with difficult decisions. Before this update, you could just throw down your dispenser and get your sentry up as quickly as possible. But now you have to choose: Is it maybe worth it to get my dispenser up to a higher level first? Or should I just put up my sentry gun before I worry about my dispenser? Or should I put up my level 3 teleporter exit first?
Yes, that’s right. You can put down level 3 teleporter exits. Teleporters are upgraded as a pair: You can upgrade either the entrance or the exit. But if you first upgrade the entrance to level 3, which will take a short time as it’s usually located near a spawn room, the next teleporter exit you put down will be level 3. So if you’re located in the enemy base, if you can quickly build a teleporter exit, your entire team can be there as well.

And this gives us interesting possibilities. Gone is the sole archetype of defensive engineers. While it was already sometimes done on maps like cp_Well or ctf_2fort, it’s now much easier to be an offensive Engineer and put up a secondary base right in the enemy’s base.

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Everybody who has played any online game and has visited its forums, knows the problem. Whiners. There is always a group that whines about how something is too strong, this skill is too weak, this quest is too hard, this gun is too accurate. No matter how much you enjoy the game, they will always find something to whine about. In reality, these whiners deal more damage than you may think.

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As most of the people who follow the RTS-genre know, and maybe some who don’t, Blizzard’s long-awaited Starcraft 2 has appeared on several events. For example, at the annual blizzcon, Starcraft 2 was playable for the general public, and even some games were played on stage. Furthermore, the developers of the game have elaborated on changed game concepts. But will these changes affect the game in a positive way?

The original StarCraft was released 10 years ago, and its expansion, Brood War, soon followed. Compared to a game like Age of Empires II, which was released a year later, StarCraft was quite basic. While Age of Empires II used 4 different kinds of resources, StarCraft only used 2: Minerals and Vespene gas. And while Age of Empires II had over 10, players could only choose one of three races or factions in StarCraft.

One of the biggest difference between StarCraft and other Real Time Strategy games, is that the game engine hardly helps the player: There is very limited automatic resource gathering, the path finding is simply atrocious, there is no way to automatically form formations, it’s impossible to queue the building of structures for Terrans, and that is only the tip of the iceberg.

But StarCraft was blessed with one thing: Almost complete control over your units. While in other games the AI might work against you while you’re manually handling your units, StarCraft just lets you do as you please. So while there is no way to automatically form formations, you can do it manually. While the AI is terrible at targeting, you can do it manually. While the AI is terrible at path finding, you can do it manually.

And this also had big influences on the skill gap between new and skill players. While the new player has his hands full with ordering his army around, the skilled player will micro his units to perfect his control over his army. This way, unless the new player gains a huge advantage by controlling the game with his economy (or rushes the skilled player), the skilled player will always win. The bareness of the game is one of its defining factors.

But of course, no developer likes to have a game with terrible path finding or AI. So naturally, Blizzard has fixed this in StarCraft 2. However, this means adjustments have to be made. For example, workers gather minerals so fast with the increased path finding, Blizzard was forced to adjust their mineral capacity from 8 to 5. But the big question is: Will these improvements actually improve the game or not?

Of course, at this point, we can do nothing but speculate. And of course, we can expect changes in the game play (otherwise it couldn’t be called a new game). My guess is that it will have a negative effect on the game.

We can draw parallels with other games. For example, let us take the Super smash bros. games. Super Smash bros Melee (SSBM) was a popular game for tournament players. It was heavily based on so-called ‘advanced techniques’, that abused bugs in the game engine to give the user an edge. Then came Super smash bros Brawl (SSBB), its sequel on Nintendo Wii. While SSBB was certainly an improvement over SSBM, with a big roster upgrade and an improved game engine, there was something lacking. The depth these ‘advanced techniques’ created, lacked in SSBB. Therefore the game felt shallow.

The situation StarCraft is in is very similar. The importance of micro defines parts of the game, just like in SSBM. StarCraft is also played a lot in tournaments. And StarCraft 2 is, just like SSBB, very pretty compared to its predecessor. Can we accurately predict the future? No, we can’t. But we can hope for Blizzard to make sure the game does not lose its depth.

A lot of people who own a Nintendo Wii know the problem. When you first get your Wii, you’re excited. You play the games, you think everything is awesome. You’ll never need another console. The controls are so good, the gameplay is so much fun, you’ll enjoy your Wii forever. Fast-forward to the present, and it’ll probably be collecting dust. Maybe you used it for a couple of hours to play a recent release, like Disaster: Day of Crisis, but then you went back to doing other things. Why is it so hard to keep enjoying your Wii?

The answer is that there are no games on the Wii that you can put a lot of time in. As an example, let us take a look at Metacritic.com’s top 20 list for Wii games. There are 8 games that are strictly single-player, and all of them are quite short. 6 of them are Wiiware (which is quite shaming for big developers, honestly), and the remaining games include Guitar hero, Brawl and Wario ware.

Wario ware? Yes, it’s a fun game if you’ve got some friends over. But will you ever play it for more than an hour? No, you won’t. The same goes for Guitar hero. The only game in the 20 best games that you can put a lot of time in is Brawl. And one game does not make a console.

So what does the Wii need? It needs three things:

Long single-player games

It needs those games that you can just play on your own for hours. Things like long RPGs that take over 80 hours to complete. Things like strategic games that you can just play over and over again. Most games on the Wii take less than 10 hours to complete, and have very little replay value. Games like Twilight Princess and Super Mario Galaxy take a bit longer to complete, but they still aren’t fantastic: And you’re basically done once you’ve collected everything, which shouldn’t take too long either.

Multiplayer

One of the most confusing things is how there are hardly any good multi player games on the Wii. Sure, there’s Wii sports and Wario ware, but I’m talking about those games where you can sit down with your friend and play a co-op campaign, or spend a long time playing against each other. The only game I can even think of that has co-op campaign is Brawl, and the Subspace Emissary is not one of its best modes.

On-line multi player

The way to spend most of your time is, of course, on-line multi player. For some reason, there are only two games with decent on-line play: Again, Brawl, and Pokemon Battle Revolution. However, Brawl is hurt by lag issues, and the settings for random battles are far from optimal. Battle revolution is a lot of fun, but it’s not very addictive.

Luckily, there are some games coming out that will help remedy this. For example, Monster Hunter Tri will have extensive on-line (without friend-codes), and Animal Crossing: City Folk will give you a lot of fun while chopping down trees in your friend’s town.

I think that as long as these wishes are fulfilled, the Wii will stop collecting dust and will instead become a great console. While it’s currently lacking in the games department, it has great potential. Especially if you look at the amazing lineup the Wii has for the next year, it will definitely get better.