You’re a stowaway on a boat that has just been through a storm and an attack by a sea monster.  Now you find yourself washed up on a beach where ruins have recently "risen" out of the ground and caused creatures to come into existence in this land. A group called the Inquisition has come to take control over the local town, removing its Don, controlling the gold and artifacts from the ruins, and forcing anyone who opposes them to be sent to a monastery for a "mindset adjustment."  The exiled Don and some of his men now live in one of the ruins in the swamp area. The game is open world and the choices you make effect the storyline. You can help the Inquisition which leans more towards magic and combat. Alternately you can help the Don who has more of a combat and hunting approach.

Quests consist of gathering items, killing monsters collecting information, shaking down shop owners for protection money, sneaking around, stealing, and general helping out. You can also see two sides of one quest depending on who you speak to. So if you help out one person instead of the other for similar goals, you will never be able to help the other person with conflicting interests.

Character interactions were also enjoyable and realistic to a point. If you robbed someone right in front of them they will likely not talk to you and will remember what you did. This sometimes leads to quests that cannot be finished. Luckily though there are spells that can be cast to force someone to forget any misdeed. Pick pocketing is an enjoyable and useful technique that allows you to recover items stolen from you.  This skill has different levels and has a bit of a learning curve; once you initiate a pickpocket attempt, you only have a certain amount of time to grab what you want. Pick pocketing is also useful if you know someone stole one of your items when you were knocked out to get them back.

Risen takes place in a setting that looks very much like South America. The lighting in the game is rather dark making monitors with high contrasts or deep blacks rather hard at times to see what you’re playing unless you turn the brightness settings way up; unfortunately this washes out some of the great graphics and cinematic lighting. Some parts of the game are intentionally left dark as you need to use torches to see where you are going inside of caves or the catacombs of the ruins. The ground in the light has a lush glow and the city looks great in the moonlight. In fact I rather enjoyed the graphical style, though I wish I could have customized my look a bit more as I look like the main character of the show Prison Break with my ultra short buzz cut look.  The water was also well rendered and the thunderstorms and rain effects at night have to be the best I have seen in a game, with the whole setting going from really dark to super bright all around me when the lighting clashes. The games NPC’s were also more detailed and much easier to tell apart than similar games I have encountered.

The game leveling up is done with experience points, but other attributes like strength, dexterity, and weapon and crafting skills are gained by talking to people and asking them to train you. This, of course, will cost you a bit of gold. There are 3 types of close combat weapons such as swords, axes and blunt objects. For attacking from a distance you can use bows, crossbows or magic. Casting spells will use up Mana that needs to be replenished with potions and the like.

The game also has a cooking system in which you can take the meat off killed creatures  and cook it to regain heath or Mana. You can also obtain special recipes and collect the ingredients to make special foods. The same principles can be applied for the alchemy for potions and smith skills for making weapons and armor.

The combat for handheld weapons is done with the left mouse button for attack and the right mouse button for shielding or blocking by turning your weapon on its side. You can also parry the attack if you press the right mouse button just before the enemy is going to attack. The system for locking on enemies is automatic and very well executed. I rarely found my back turned to one enemy while fighting another. For bow attacks you go into a 3^rd or first person view to fire. The closer you are to hitting the enemy’s head the more damage the enemy takes.  Casting spells can be very useful while fighting in hand to hand combat.

One thing I really liked about Risen was that the enemies don’t seem to fall into too many western RPG stereotypes—sure there were gnomes and ghouls but the majority of them seemed very fresh. The AI was also well done; even though you could figure out some of the enemy attack patterns it never seemed monotonous, always giving a good challenge as these patterns were never set in stone and could always be a bit random.

Blast Factor: Besides some slight graphical issues and lots of trouble with the game’s DRM (which they will hopefully have fixed by the time you read this) I really enjoyed the game and can’t wait to play through it again following a different storyline path.

Risen is available on the PC, and an upcoming Xbox 360 version. It retails for $49.99; a copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes.

Order of War is one of the first steps for Square Enix to appeal to a broader audience”"it’s published by them, but developed by Wargaming.net, and is quite unlike the kind of title you expect from the RPG behemoth.

Order of War is set during World War II and has the player playing through famous historical battles as either Americans against Germans in France or German forces versus Soviets in Poland. You control almost all the aspects of the battles including airstrikes, ground troops, paratroopers, tanks, artillery and even managing reinforcements.

Each level in the game starts out with some black and white video footage of actual battles that have lead up to the scenario about to be played, which I found gives the game much more depth, as opposed to just dropping you into a battle. The game then zooms in on all the units, tanks and vehicles and begins to display many statistics on the screen at once: everything from number of troops to the firepower of missiles to almost blueprint like schematics of certain vehicles. You are then briefed on your objectives as parts of the map are revealed to you. The objectives range from protecting allied convoys, capturing occupied villages and holding positions.

The onscreen HUD displays the number of platoons you control and each of their conditions, a mini map and your resource points. Resource points increase at a steady rate over time and can be used for a variety of things, including paratroops and airstrikes. Each option may cost you a different amount of support, further adding depth to the game play. Many factors can affect success such as varying geography/topography. Tanks and artillery having longer range when on top of a hill and vice versa when firing from downhill; infantry have better cover when in a wooded area. Infantry can hide in trenches or houses for added cover which can give you a great advantage.

The enemy forces have pretty much the same abilities and resources as you do and it is especially challenging to get through a location when the opposing forces are in the houses all around you. Infantry can also load into trucks to faster get to a map location faster, though loading and reloading the trucks can use up valuable time which you don’t always have. There are other disadvantages to using trucks as it puts an entire platoon in one place which makes an easy target for the enemy, and when a truck full of troops is destroyed the whole platoon dies. There are also trucks for artillery that carry anti-tank cannons that take some time to set up but once set up they can become a key to victory in any battle.

Statistics are displayed after each mission is completed and, based on your performance, you are awarded medals, such as purple hearts, and points to upgrade your units in future missions. The upgrades are broken down into Infantry, Artillery and Tanks, and include increases in accuracy, speed, etc. For example you can upgrade your infantry’s accuracy with firearms to level 1 and, if you have enough points left, increase to level 2 and so on. These changes permanently effect the performance of your units through the whole game.

The graphics looked nice at an aerial view, but can zoom in so close that you get a great feel of how it would seem to forces on the ground, though the troops can seem a bit blocky zoomed in. There is also a cinematic function where the screen goes into a letter box view and weaves through the battlefield at different angles and speeds to give you the feel of watching a war movie. Though this function is well done I never found many times to use it as there was so much going on.

In the first level I found there was so much going on I wondered how I could ever command so many units in real time. But after some practice and finding out just how useful and important the pause function was to the game, I started to really enjoy myself. I soon felt rather engrossed in the whole experience. Though the game has some problems, the minimap did not rotate with the camera so it was hard to navigate at times. I also felt the game assumes you know WWII lingo like what a Howitzer or Nebelwerfer is. The strength of the infantry felt weak and I found them more useful as distractions then actual fighters, as the game seems to rely heavily on tanks. The infantry AI seemed lacking as at times, and became rather annoying when they wanted to crawl on their stomach all of a sudden. The distance you could zoom out also felt rather small.

Blast Factor: Order of War is a solid game despite some balance issues. The game really shines the most in the heat of battle and the way it sets up the scenario for you. From someone who was never really interested in WWII based games, I surprisingly found myself enjoying Order of War.

Order of War is a PC exclusive, available at retail for $39.99. A copy of this game was given to us by the publisher for review purposes.

Bioware announced today that Inon Zur has composed the score for their‚ upcoming game Dragon Age: Origins. ‚ You may have never heard of the name Inon Zur, but if you have ever played Fallout 3, Crysis,‚ or Prince of Persia you have heard some of‚  his stunning musical compositions. “From the moment you hear the Dragon Age: Origins theme to the lilting ballad, I Am The One, at the end of the game, Inon’s score is hand in glove with the Dragon Age: Origins dark fantasy” said Simon Pressey, Audio Director for the game.

The entire‚ soundtrack‚  is a collaboration‚ of‚ composer Inon Zur, vocalist Aubrey Ashburn and BioWare Audio Director Simon Pressey. It will be available for purchase or as an online download from music sites when the game is released for the 360 and PC on November 3rd.

Mission 4 of the NFS Twitter Sweepstakes is here which means another chance to be a winner. For this mission, attempt to get a‚ celebrity‚ to retweet your #NFS tweet.‚ There will be 34 winners. 33 winners will get a Need For Speed SHIFT gift bag and one winner with the biggest celebrity retweet will get tickets to the Need For Speed soundtracks artist’s show. And‚ as always‚ don’t forget to insert the #NFS hashtag.

You can find the list of celebrities right here.

Happy Tweeting!

Check back for a new mission tomorrow, as you’re running out of time to be in the running for that BMW M3.