Monthly Archives: October 2011

League of Legends Releases Champion Xerath

League of Legends Releases Xerath, The LoL Siege Tank

 

 

After a long three week dry spell without new champions (due to the chaos involved with releasing their new Dominion Map), Riot Games is proud to announce that Xerath, the Magus Ascendant will be joining League of Legends‘ ever growing champion pool.

 

 

Xerath plays out like a heroic Starcraft Siege Tank, with the ability to root himself in place to drastically increase the range of his magical bombardments. He is naturally tanky with the ability to convert his AP in armor, and features plenty of combos and stuns to keep his enemies at bay. When combining his ultimate with his range increasing stance, he can truly be considered one of the most dangerous sniping champions in the game. Your turrets will no longer keep you safe against Xerath.

 

 

Let’s take a closer look at his skills:

Ascended Form (Passive): Xerath feeds on arcane power, making him increasingly resilient to physical harm. He converts a percentage of his Ability Power into Armor.

 

Arcanopulse: Fires a long-range beam of energy, dealing magic damage to all targets hit.

 

Locus of Power: Xerath anchors himself to a source of magical power, increasing the range of all spells and granting him bonus % Magic Penetration. Although he is immobilized while Locus of Power is active, his movement speed increases upon disabling the ability.

 

Mage Chains: Deals magic damage to an enemy and marks them with Unstable Magic. The next spell Xerath strikes this enemy with stuns them.

 

Arcane Barrage: Calls down a blast of arcane energy, dealing magic damage to all enemies in an area. May be cast up to three times before going on cooldown.

 

 

As you can see from this tool kit, Xerath excels in a long battle of attrition versus a foe. Those unable to spike him down quickly will inevitably be destroyed one poke after another until forced to either B or feed him a kill.

 

 

In other news, this patch was less than stellar in balancing as Riot doesn’t want to rock the boat too hard before a few of their upcoming tournaments. However notable nerfs were sent to Lee Sin, Morgana, and Singed, taking away a little bit of their bite from their most overpowered skills.

 

 

For a full review of this patch, keep an eye on OnRPG for Jason Harper’s upcoming Xerath review!

Blacklight Retribution Announces CB Date

Blacklight Retribution Closed Beta Announced

 

 

Perfect World Entertainment unveiled today that its upcoming, next-generation first-person shooter, Blacklight Retribution, will be going into closed beta on November 10, 2011. Select players will be invited into the closed beta on day one, followed by additional waves of players in the following weeks.

 

 

“The development of Blacklight Retribution has been a hard earned labor of love and after receiving praise from both fans and media, we’re confident that our work will pay off,” said Jared Gerritzen, Creative Director at Zombie Studios. “Closed beta is another step towards a game that we know people will have a great time playing.”

 

 

“We’ve been looking forward to getting Blacklight Retribution into the hands of gamers, so we’re excited to open the game up to thousands of players,” stated Andrew Brown, Executive Producer for Perfect World Entertainment. “We are confident that many gamers out there will be pleased and will finally have a real first person shooter experience in a F2P environment.”

 

 

Blacklight Retribution has already been the recipient of several awards, including “Best Multiplayer” from Machinima during the game’s showing at PAX Prime, and Most Valuable Game from PC Gamer while at E3. OnRPG covered this game in great detail at PAX as well so be sure to read up on our coverage.

Dead Island: A Zombie Getaway

Dead Island: A Zombie Getaway

By Jackson Leung (Mepath), OnRPG Tech Wizard

 

 

 

It was Sunday night. My brother and I decided to go to our usual gaming stop; a cyber-cafe on the outskirts of town. It seems like those are the only places you can find them anymore. We were brimming with excitement over this new zombie game called Dead Island. It wasn’t long before we fired the game up and assumed our digital identities.

 

 

 

I became Xian Mei, the daughter of a Hong Kong inspector, smart, lethal, and deadly. Who, due to the unfortunate circumstance of being a female in a male dominated society, had her talents squandered by being sent to this island resort to observe for criminal activity. Curses.

 

 

 

My brother assumed the identity of Sam B. An African American rap star (yes, he’s American, the game said he grew up in New Orleans).

 

 

 

It was business as usual, I was partying it up at the resort. After a hard night of partying, I washed down some pills with my liquor and passed out on my bed.

 

 

I woke up the next morning, did my routine, and on the way out, there was something definitely wrong. The hotel’s halls were littered with suitcases. Some of these suitcases were randomly dispersed across the floor. Some of these suitcases were piled on top of each other, and some of these suitcases were made into a wall, but for what? I pondered this question as I emptied the suitcases of their contents into my pockets-of-infinite-storage.

 

 

It was weird, there were hotel rooms left open, blood stains everywhere, and even dead bodies. It must have been some wild party. It was weird, but I was late for work. I took the elevators down, when suddenly; it came to an abrupt stop. The power went out. A sound. The elevator started plummeting down. The doors flew open, and I saw, a person lying on the floor. He was surrounded by people with gray, ashy skin, their bodies showing wounds that by any medical standards were lethal. Seconds later, I noticed that they had said man’s intestines in their hands, and in their mouths. At the same moment, these cannibals took great interest to me, and started running towards me. Not a weapon in hand, stuck inside an elevator, and seeing these hoards of blood-thirsty gray people running towards me. I thought it was the end, I’m too young and beautiful to die; tear.

 

 

The elevator door slammed shut, another sudden drop, and the lights came back on. A voice from the camera offered help. They said I had to run into some maintenance room and obtain a weapon. It’s the only way I’m going to live. Shortly afterwards, the elevator opened, and I was at the lobby.

 

 

I don’t know where the maintenance room was, but I’m going to get there quick. Right after I empty these suitcases I found of their contents. But I didn’t have enough time for that. It wasn’t long until these gray people, which I’ll call zombies, took notice of me. I ran as fast as I could, I saw a door leading to a room that didn’t look like a hotel room. I made a beeline for it. I ran in front of the door, and then I dove inside.

 

 

 

When I came to, I was surrounded by people who were about to knock my head off with a bat. It wasn’t until I proved to them that I was capable of coherent thinking that they left me alone. Apparently, I am one of the few people who are immune to the virus, and one of the few people that can be bitten, and not show the same symptoms as everyone else. Sam B is another person with this mixed blessing. The once tropical paradise is now a living zombie nightmare.

 

 

Together Sam and I took our first steps out into the world of Dead Island. Taking on requests by the islanders in hopes that we can help obtain and accomplish whatever they need to help us get off the island. It wasn’t long before Sam and I were bashing in zombie skulls with whatever we could get our hands on. We had to resort to the oars from a boat, a shovel stabbed into the sand, and a kitchen knife pulled fresh from a downed zombie just to name a few of our odd ball weapons. Of course the zombie waves were endless and these primitive weapons wore out to a state of uselessness quickly.

 

 

 

We’ve recovered access cards, rescued wives, recovered medicine, salvaged car parts, and whenever we had a moment of rest, we’d improve our weapons. Whenever we came across some tools left out on some table, we’d use them to strengthen our weapons. Anything even resembling a weapon would quickly fall into our infinite-pockets!

 

 

We were on the way to restore the lighthouse power generator so that ships out at see can come to our rescue when we heard the sound we both dreaded the most. “Sorry guys, we’re now closing. Please log out. I hope guys had fun.” We grudgingly logged off the computers and proceeded home, excitedly sharing our thoughts of the game. We will definitely be playing this game again, in fact, I already bought two copies for our home PCs!

 

 

I am a huge zombie genre fan. So this review reflects mainly my opinion, and will be biased. I have a strong preference for George A. Romero zombie films and Dead Island sucked me into a world just like Romero would have imagined.

 

 

This game is like a mix of Dead Rising, Dead Rising 2, Left 4 Dead, Resident Evil, and Grand Theft Auto. It had the need to obtain weapons, these weapons also get worn down and break, just like Dead Rising. It had the ability to mess with your weapons, just like Dead Rising 2. It had the zombies chasing you like Left 4 Dead, but unlike left 4 dead, avoided the campy unrealistic occurrence of sudden hordes of zombies arriving. You kind of have venture into areas where zombies are located for them to take notice of you, and then the chasing starts. Finally, there’s the atmosphere of Resident Evil. You don’t feel like you’re going to die any time soon, but you’re always concerned that something might kill you. There might be something around the corner, behind that bush, behind you! At the same time, not only are you scared of being killed, you’re scared of wasting your precious weapon’s durability on killing the damn thing. Finally it resembles GTA in that you can steal and take whatever you need to survive with little worry of legal repercussions.

 

 

I loved everything about this game, and in my book, this is a must play game for any zombie fan. It’s a good single player game, but to get the full experience you MUST play it with friends. Some people say that this game brings nothing special to the table, but really, I’m not sure if there has been another zombie-genre game that has fulfilled this zombie-fan-gamer’s desires any better. Dead Rising was great when it came out, Left 4 Dead was intense, and Resident Evil kept me awake at night, but this game has a whole different feel altogether! I feel like I’ve been on that island, and I’ve slain those zombies, and I desperately need to get back to the game so that Xian and Sam can leave that island! They need me!

 

 

 

The Verdict: Play me now (10/10)

 

The pros:

* zombies

* visuals

* sound

*zombie bros

* atmosphere

* realism

* open-world environment

*zombie room service

* their first trailer

* the list goes on…

 

The cons:

* I can’t really think of any. Perhaps if the graphics were more realistic, then when that day comes where I finally bash my computer screen in after losing a match of Starcraft, I could use Dead Island as a reactionary excuse.

 

I’m always lurking the forums and redesigning OnRPG. Feel free to say hi.

Dead Island

Dead Island combines first-person action with a heavy focus on melee combat, character development and customization of a vast array of weapons. All of these gameplay features presented in a dark story inspired by classic zombie movies with a gritty and engrossing campaign that can be played with up to 4 players in co-op mode.

 

Features:

 

First Person Melee Combat: Pick up a sword, hatchet, or pipe and get ready to knock some heads with precision game mechanics built around life and death combat.

 

Co-op Storyline: Team up with up to 4 players as you make your way through the gritty resort. There are strength in numbers!

 

Weapon Customization: What’s better than a sword? A gun with a sword mounted on it. Combine whatever you find to create some ideal weapons to meet your zombie hunting needs.

 

RPG Elements: Advance your character’s skill sets as the story progresses in preparation for the final showdowns.

Immortal King Online

Immortal King is all about conquest in the world of Ancient Greece. Fact and fiction meld into a war torn land where witches and demigods rule. If you’re familiar with browser strategy games then you should be able to jump straight into this one without much difficulty. As your build and upgrade your hometown, you can collect taxes to spend on further upgrades or on hiring stronger mercenaries to conquer new lands.

Features:

Hero System: There are 137 hero units, 72 types of soldiers, and 7 usable formations in Immortal Kings. Each side is allowed to bring up to 10 hero units into combat, making for plenty of variety from battle to battle. Choosing the correct formation to counter your enemy makes the difference between victory and defeat.

Prestige: By aligning yourself with the Ocean, Underworld, or Heaven, players can obtain faction and unlock progressively stronger heroes.

City Management: Build and upgrade your city with the funds of your conquests to create a powerful economic powerhouse. Strong armies fund strong cities which in turn allow you to build stronger armies!