Trine, the most recent release from Frozenbyte, is a new unique fantasy-based RPG. It is a 2D side-scrolling game, reminiscent of older platform games (think Super Mario Bros.) but with a modern twist “" it has absolutely beautiful graphics. The focus of Trine is solving tricky puzzles to progress through different environments, as well as bits of combat against an undead army. The most unique part of the game however is its superior physics engine; every little thing your characters do can affect your surroundings and help you move forward. This extends as far as shooting a rope with arrows to cause it to snap, to placing heavy objects in certain places to act as counter-weights.

You are able to play one of three types of characters in Trine “" the wizard, the thief, or the knight. You can switch between these three characters at will and without penalty, which allows you to easily maneuver through the environment and create a mix of ranged and melee combat. The wizard starts off with the ability to conjure boxes and move objects via a telekinesis-like ability, but learns new and upgraded spells as you progress, such as conjuring planks you can walk on. The thief uses a bow for offensive combat, and a grapple to help move around her surroundings. At first the bow is simply used for combat or to knock objects over, but later on you can even light torches via flaming arrows! The grapple is a staple tool to solving puzzles in Trine, and also fun to use. The knight is the typical sword-and-board character, equipped with a sword and shield to fight off the undead. At first it doesn’t seem like the knight is very helpful, but eventually you can learn new skills to pick up heavy objects or make yourself more effective in combat. Also, thanks to the very realistic physics engine, the knight is a poor swimmer and will sink when you jump in water due to all of his heavy armor.

As you move through different areas in the game you will have to overcome many types of obstacles. On top of fighting off the undead, you must also find ways around cliffs, moving platforms, spikes and deadly ooze. A nice thing about Trine is that you aren’t locked in to one way of doing things; instead almost everything can be overcome in various ways depending on how you wish to play and how you interact with the environment.

Character-environment interaction is really where this game shines though, as combat isn’t anything special.‚  When fighting the undead skeletons not much more is needed than jumping around and clicking your attack button, giving the game a kind of hack-and-slash feel versus a need for a strategy. Enemy AI isn’t very creative either, leaving you with the impression that combat was more of a side-note for this game.

As you move through different areas you will notice little blue, green, and red vials hidden in different areas, or drop from monsters you kill. The blue and red vials replenish lost energy and health, and these are rather abundant thankfully because you will notice that you may sometimes spend energy rather quickly. The green vials give experience, and are typically in hard to reach places and require much more effort to get to. Some mobs do give you XP as well, but it is not guaranteed. The leveling system in Trine if extremely basic in this way, and once you collect a certain amount of XP you will level up, allowing you to boost each characters skills a little bit.

There are also little chests you can find as you progress, typically located in places that require some thinking to get to but sometimes right in the open, that offer different rewards. Chests may drop items for your characters, or teach new skills for one of them to spice up gameplay. Most items have special bonuses to them and can be swapped between the three characters very easily via the character menu.

A hidden little fact about Trine is that you have the option to play the game cooperatively with up to two others. I say it is hidden because though the game boasts co-op play, when sitting at the main menu screen it isn’t very clear that you actually can do this. You have to first navigate your way through the options menu, then controls, in order to set up other players controls. This is definitely a pain, as it could take someone quite a while before they even realize how to utilize this option.

Blast Factor: Ultimately, Trine is definitely a fun game to play and has a captivating storyline. Combat is fun, though nothing special for sure, and the environmental puzzles remind me of the times I played games like Prince of Persia. Beautiful graphics pull you into this game, and the shockingly real physics and fluid gameplay keep you playing. However, if you don’t plan on replaying the game or playing co-op, which can get tough on a single PC, at $29.99 ($22.49 until August 19^th via Steam) Trine is a bit expensive considering I finished the game in about five hours of playing.

Trine is available internationally on PC, and will see a North American retail release in September. A Playstation Network version is also forthcoming.

The new free-to-play game Hover Kart Racing, created by OMGPOP, has become a huge hit in just a short amount of time. This little on-line racing game has not been live for even a month, yet has already logged about twenty-three thousand hours of gameplay!

Hover Kart isn’t a type of game where you would sit down with the goal of “clearing content” or blasting away enemies in a deathmatch-style event. Instead, it just so happens to be the perfect time killer . . . and is rather addicting. Old fans of Maria Kart will love this game “" it is essentially the free, online version of some SNES style tracks.

Gameplay is identical to Kart, though with different inputs: you control your little racer via the standard WASD or arrow keys and have the ability to jump and use special items you collect. During races you try to drive over little squares that randomly select a bonus item you can use, ranging from speed boosts to landmines and hover missiles (banana peels and turtle shells anyone?).

Whether you are racing NPCs or other people just like you, you gain points for doing well and winning races, eventually gaining levels and medals!

Hover Kart also offers a Shop which allows you to spend “coins” to get new types of drivers, karts, and various types of improvements to enhance gameplay. However, these little bonuses have a limited duration and you are only given set amount of coins to begin with. Once your coin supply starts dwindling you do have that option to pay real cash for more (very common amongst F2P games). This is not required of course, so you can be a casual Hover Kart player or a total fanatic who spends some extra cash to deck out their kart.

Though not graphically stunning in the least bit, Hover Kart does achieve its goal “" it keeps you entertained when you are bored, then hooks you into keep playing. So next time you find yourself sitting around home (or work!) with a bit of spare time, definitely give Hover Kart a go.

I dare you to try and log off within 10 minutes.

Icarus Studio’s new title, Fallen Earth, is set to bring an exciting new twist on the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game genre, taking place at a post-apocalyptic Grand Canyon and drawing from both the RPG and first-person shooter genres. The Fallen Earth universe takes place in the year 2156, after the deadly Shiva Virus has wiped out almost all of the human population and nuclear war has left the Earth as nothing but a desolate wasteland. Of the humans who survived, there are now six factions that dominate the region “" some allied with each other, but many at war. You have the option of aligning yourself with the faction of your choice, at the cost of being attacked on sight by rival factions.

Many unique features are available in this new title, ranging from special abilities to offensive and defensive mutations to exotic weaponry, and I was lucky enough to experience these by gaining access to the game’s closed beta event.

Once the game loaded I was presented with the character creation screen (the beta client lacked an opening cinematic), which is by far one of the most detailed character creation systems I have seen. First you select a sex and name for your character (you also have the option of creating a last name if you so choose), and then are able to manipulate your character’s features in a multitude of ways.

There are twenty-five face shapes alone to choose from, and then you have the option of make you character look progressively older, from a youthful teen to a wrinkly, grandfatherly figure. A large variety of skin tones and hair styles, from liberty spikes to a comb-over, are available as well. The feature I liked most here was the ability to add multiple piercings to the ears, eyebrows, and even the tongue, as well as a variety of tattoos and body paintings to the face. The rest of the body didn’t have as much in-depth customization, which really isn’t a shame since it will be covered in an assortment of armor anyways. However, you do have the option of additional tattoos on the arms and legs, as well as choosing the character’s t-shirt and sneaker styles.

The user interface is pretty advanced and very user friendly. Almost every window you open has the ability to be resized, dragged to another location, and have its opacity changed. At start, the chat box is fairly large, but it is fairly customizable so this provided me an excuse to play with it. The top left of the screen provides information regarding your character: your name, health, stamina, and gamma (used for mutation skills), and experience bar. The top right shows your mini-map, which shows quest icons, non-player characters, gathering locations and an interesting little perk “" a meter that measures the volume of sound you are producing, to help you be stealthy. The action bar is pretty customizable as well. You can elongate it as well as create multiple bars and key-map each of them; however, as of this time you are unable to separate the bars from each other.

You play your character in Fallen Earth mainly in third-person view, including combat, though you do have the option to switch to first-person. This is typical of most RPGs, however, combat draws from the FPS genre and uses a circular reticle “" the first feature I didn’t like. When wielding melee weapons this seems to fit “" no problems so far. Though as soon as you use ranged weapons (for example, your starting crossbow or zipguns) combat gets a little aggravating. I am not at all used to playing an FPS game from the third-person view, so part of this has to do with my gaming history, but it was simply difficult and “clunky.” It’s possible to switch back and forth between views between fights, but this is more of an annoyance than anything. Certain weapons do offer the chance to look down the sights, such as scoped rifles, and this efficiently eliminates the problem.

Though at first this is a minor annoyance, you do get used to it and are able to appreciate the unique qualities of the combat and weapon systems. The types of weapons available to your character are vast, ranging from wooden planks to swords to sub-machine guns and sniper rifles. Many weapons also offer the chance to further customize them, and all of them eventually take durability damage and must be fixed. All of these weapons are able to be crafted and maintained by the player through trade skills, which I will explain in more depth later on, or bought from others.

One of my favorite aspects of the game is the ability to equip not one, but six weapons at once! You have six weapon slots to fill up, which you can cycle through at any point, from the two-handed weapon slot over your back to fitting pistols on either side of your hip. There is nothing like shooting a giant spider with a crossbow and then running up and whacking the bug with a two-by-four. You are able to cycle through weapons by holding the Control key and either pressing the corresponding slot number (1 through 6) or by scrolling your mouse wheel. During the beta test, however, there seemed to be a glitch that would pop up from time to time when using the mouse wheel to select the weapons.

Similar to the advanced weapon selection is the gear selection, which boasts the ability to fill 19 armor slots. There is an incredible variety of armor in Fallen Earth, starting with cargo pants and bandanas, but eventually you’ll find old Kevlar and be able to craft top-end protective equipment. Each piece of gear protects against vulnerabilities to certain types of incoming damage, but no one set protects against everything, so multiple pieces of gear will be needed for different situations. During my testing I was able to craft myself a nice set of starting gear, donning some cargo shorts, a bandana, and some black fingerless gloves “" the regular, post-apocalyptic bandit!

The Sims 3 has been a long awaited release this summer, promising a ton of new features since the franchise’s previous release. One thing is for certain, whether or not you are a huge fan of The Sims, the available features are definitely entertaining to play around with!

The game starts off with the new Create-A-Sim program, where you are able to completely alter almost every aspect of your Sims. The standard facial changes are allowed along with the ability to adjust all preset models to your liking, and many new haircut styles are introduced, as well as the ability to literally create your own wardrobe for the Sims. Another very cool feature is being able to choose a voice for your Sim, then adjusting the pitch to your liking.

This new feature is the Create a Style tool, which allows you to create a new style of clothing or add your own flavor to existing patterns. This also lets you copy styles from one type of clothing and carry it over to anything else so they can match! Another bonus is that this isn’t limited to your Sim’s clothing “" the Create a Style tool can also be used on anything you can buy for your Sim, so you can add your own touch to almost every design element of the game.

Depending on what age you make your Sim, you are able to choose a different number of personality traits. There are 63 personality traits to choose from, from being absent-minded to hating being naked to being evil! This gives you an endless variety of combinations to completely shape how your Sim acts and views the world. On top of personality traits, you can also choose a few of your Sims favorite things and their life goals!

When I was able to play The Sims 3 it was the first time I had played The Sims in at least two years, so the creation phase alone took me a solid hour to explore the different features and be happy with my Sim. Not being an avid Sims player, I am happy to say that the character creation part of the game is very simple to learn even with all of the given options. So how better to begin playing the game than with an evil computer genius with a good sense of humor?

When it comes to The Sims 3 world, it allows much more freedom than previous The Sims titles and it is now seamless. This is always a very nice touch to a game, providing a much more sandbox-style feel to game that already lets you do whatever you wish.

Whether you decide to buy a house for your Sim and decorate accordingly, or build a new house from scratch, you will spending a lot of time in Buy Mode. This is standard in The Sims games, but from what I remember from the other titles The Sims 3 offers a much simpler UI and it’s much easier to cycle through tools and items. The only thing I found that was a pain was the way to move your camera view around, as it was extremely awkward.

During my play time I created my own house for my Sim, with fully outfitted rooms with custom styles thanks to the Create a Style tool. After a while it becomes a bit captivating as you take the time to carefully design each room while building houses, then having so much freedom to decorate and outfit them with many types of appliances and furniture.

Another new feature is the Create a Movie tool, which lets you record up to 1 GB of gameplay at a time. After uploading the recording, you are presented with many tools for video editing to give your movie a polished look. I was unable to get the chance to play around with this feature as of yet, but it is something I look forward to experimenting with.

This game expands on the previous style of gameplay in other Sims games, providing new jobs and choices for your Sims as well as more items to purchase for them.

The Sims 3 was overall a fun a game to play, with many new features and tons of new items to improve gameplay. The game is even more sandbox than ever, allowing limitless amounts of customization and the choice to do whatever you please, making your experience more unique than ever.

The Sims 3 is available on Windows and Mac OS X, retails for $49.99, and comes with $10 worth of Sims Store points upon registration.