Here at Avault, we tend to only review games and related hardware accessories. Yet, every once in awhile, I feel the need to comment on something hardware related that has little to do with games. I’ve complained before about the lousy product performance of NetGear wireless products, but today I am compelled to write something much more positive.

For the past few months, I have been the proud owner for a 2011 Ford Fiesta (a good car, by the way). What is relevant to the technologically savvy crowd is Ford’s Sync system, an option available on most new models. Now, I admit, I was a bit skeptical when I read some advertising on Sync’s capabilities; after all, what could be more pretentious than driving a smart car that requires regular updates from the Internet? However, after a test drive, purchase, and five months of ownership, I feel confident saying that Sync is a wonderful piece of automotive engineering, even though it doesn’t utilize any cutting edge, science fiction technology.

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Manufacturer: Cooler Master
MSRP: $29.99

When it comes to cooling laptops, my general rule has always been, “If the equipment can’t cool itself at room temperature, then it’s a piece of garbage.” Thus, I have always been a bit skeptical about third party laptop coolers. After all, it seems like a waste of hardware dollars that could be better spent on other things, like a laptop that can cool itself. When my editors sent me a Cooler Master, I was fully prepared to roll my eyes in bored frustration. Yet, it turns out that the joke is on me. Rather than using a pointless piece of hardware for a few weeks, it turns out that I have had the chance to review a well engineered device.

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Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Arrowhead Game Studios
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.4 GHz Pentium IV or AMD 3500+ or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 8800/ATI Radeon X1900 or better graphics card, DirectX-compatible sound card, DirectX 9, 2 GB hard-drive space; Magicka base game must be installed
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Riding the success of their game Magicka, Arrowhead Game Studios has released DLC for it that takes the plucky wizards of the original game and drops them into the jungles of Southeast Asia to fight the Vietnam War. Magicka: Vietnam gives you a new complete mission to play, a new arena fight to survive, a new soundtrack that sounds like it borrows from every rock-and-roll band from the Rolling Stones to the Jimi Hendrix Experience, new weapons (including a wizard-staff version of the American flag), and a new appearance for your wizard that alludes to half a dozen movies set in the war. It’s an absurd premise for a spell-casting game; since its Arrowhead, it’s not surprising that they make it work.

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It’s time to face up to something. It’s been on my mind for some time, but I’ve been avoiding any discussion of it here or at my job, for fear of game-based reprisals and jeering. But I’m not afraid anymore. As some of my colleagues might point out, being in the closet about anything is a terrible place to be in one’s life. I might as well come out about it.

I’m a teacher. I enjoy what I do, and I take that part of my life into the games I play.

There, I said it. It wasn’t easy, but there you go. Sometimes, a man’s got to be honest with himself (and, as Dirty Harry would point out, know his limitations, but that’s a discussion for another time).

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Publisher: Sega
Developer: Creative Assembly
System requirements: 2 GHz Intel dual-core/2.6 GHz Intel single-core or equivalent CPU, 1 GB RAM (2 GB for Vista/Win 7), 256 MB DirectX 9.0c-compatible graphics card with Shader Model 3.0 support, 20 GB hard-drive space
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Coming away from the successful release of Napoleon: Total War with good sales, The Creative Assembly has decided to go back to where it all began. Total War: Shogun 2 is a remake of their classic first release, and gamer expectations could not be higher. Competing not only against a market full of strategy games, but also against their own earlier success, the designers have undertaken a task that is almost as difficult as the historical politics covered by the game, which is set in the Warring States period of 16th-century Japan. Your goal is to become Shogun. And since every other clan is also trying to become Shogun, there’s a lot of fighting and diplomacy along the path to victory.

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Manufacturer: Genius
Requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, available USB port
MSRP: $44.90

What if a mouse was built and shaped like a pen? Would it be more efficient? Would it be easy to use? These are the questions Genius would like us to consider with the release of their new Pen Mouse. Designed to “…give you a brand new experience on cursor control for better handling and more comfort than a regular mouse,” this accessory aims high in an attempt to give users a better way to interact with their PCs.

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Hey PC gamers!

We’re having a PC game night for Crysis 2 (the demo for the moment). We’ve got a whole dedicated server waiting for us, and I’m thinking that Tuesday nights would make a great time to get together virtually and frag some nano-suits.

Tomorrow, March 8 at 8:00 pm CST!

I promise not to use any special perks against you for the first 2 minutes!

Art of War Central has kindly provided the servers to make this and future game nights possible. They were one of the first professional game server companies and remain one of the best. They take pride in having the finest network and hardware, top notch professional tech support via toll free phone and competitive pricing. You’re never on your own with Art of War Central, and they offer over 100 different games! Let us know what else you’d like to play.

Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Arrowhead Game Studios
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7, 2.4 GHz Pentium IV or AMD 3500+ or better CPU, 2 GB RAM, Nvidia GeForce 8800/ATI Radeon X1900 or better graphics card, DirectX-compatible sound card, DirectX 9, 2 GB hard-drive space
Genre: RPG
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Every once in awhile, a game comes along that combines creative mechanics with solid storytelling and excellent programming (Morrowind comes to mind). They are games that we, as gamers, take seriously. However, occasionally a game gives us creative gameplay and uses it as a platform for humor. Dungeon Keeper and its sequel are the best examples of this. It is in this tradition of good gaming and humor that Arrowhead Game Studios has created Magicka, a game that incorporates numerous pop-culture references. Magicka strives to provide an absurd, and yet heroic, RPG-lite narrative, and couples it with a detailed system for using magic.

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Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: 1C Company
System Requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista; 2 GHz dual core processor; 1 GB RAM; 4 GB free hard drive space; 512 MB, PS 2.0, GeForce 6800GTX or better; DirectX-compatible sound card; DirectX 9.0c; 3-button Mouse or keyboard; Internet connection for multiplayer component
Genre: RTS
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

1C must be making money from the Majesty franchise, as they have released yet another expansion. This time, the king (you) and your Sean-Connery-talking advisor are kicked out of power by your own people, leaving you with little option but to make alliances with those monsters you’ve spent the last few expansions fighting. Majesty 2: Monster Kingdom sees you take the reins of leadership once more, raising a horde of goblins, rat-men, and liches to facilitate your return to power. In other words, it’s time to be the bad guy.

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Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Nitro Games
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Windows7; 2.0 GHz processor; 2GB RAM; 4GB hard disk space; Shader model 3.0 video card; DirectX9 compatible sound card
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: Available now

Having missed out on East India Company and its expansions, I did not know what to expect from Nitro Games when Commander: Conquest of the Americas came across my virtual desk. Reading up on the literature before playing showed me a game with both strategic and tactical elements. I imagined I was going to be playing a “sailing ships fighting and colony management” kind of game. While it has both elements, Commander is really a game that is very much in the tradition of its predecessors by Nitro: this is a game that is first and foremost about money. In Commander, you establish colonies, set up trade routes, defend those same colonies and trade routes, and try to expand your empire in a rational way that supports your home country’s need for mercantilist economic growth. Patient and careful empire management, not mindless fighting and conquest, is the key to long-term victory.

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My colleague Alaric wrote an excellent blog entry recently entitled Unfree-to-play. In it, he discussed Turbine’s move in Lord of the Rings Online to a free-to-play model with microtransactions. After giving the subject some thought, I felt moved to comment on a tangential, but related topic. And since I have a blog here, I can get on my own soapbox without stealing from Alaric’s thunder.

First of all, let me say something that might seem like it has absolutely nothing to do with free-to-play microtransactions. I hate businesses that illegally sell gold, leveling, or any other in-game services for MMOs. I loathe their activities. I hate the impact these activities have on MMOs, which range from devaluing in-game currency to causing security risks. I hate their use of chat channels to advertise. I detest the damage to game balance caused by this industry. I am even mystified by my fellow gamers who patronize such services, when they should know that gold-selling services exploit a supply of labor in much the same way that sweatshops exploit workers to make cheap products to be sold in countries such as the USA. I also hate players that level their characters using such services and then try to run end-game content. Not only do they not know how to play their character, they also don’t even know what the story is about. And by the time they learn how their character works, they might as well have just leveled up normally anyway. Gold-selling businesses are an unethical blight upon gaming. (Can you tell I don’t like them?)

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Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Paradox Interactive
System requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Win 7, Pentium IV 1.9 GHz or equivalent CPU, 128 MB graphics card with Vertex and Pixel Shader 2.0 support, 512 MB RAM, 1 GB hard-drive space, DirectX-compatible sound card, DirectX 9.0c, Europa Universalis III and Heir to the Throne expansion
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Everyone
Release date: Available now

Europa Universalis III turned four this January, just in time for the release of Divine Wind. Paradox Interactive, having polled its fans, decided that an extra, unplanned expansion would be the best way to crown what has become their flagship strategy franchise. To date, Europa Universalis, in all of its iterations, has focused on European-style politics, religion and imperialism. Considering that the historical period covered by the game sees European countries dominate large portions of the world, this is no surprise. But because the game must account for the the rest of the world as well, its mechanics have often failed to really deliver a culturally distinct gaming experience for Asia and India. Japan and China have been treated as European nation-states, creating bizarre gaming situations, such as Ming China conquering swaths of land all the way to Eastern Europe, or Japan having a nice, quiet, and very politically unified gaming experience for 400 years, nevermind all those pesky samurai and daimyo. Europa Universalis III: Divine Wind is an expansion that recognizes cultural, political and religious differences in the world to which European explorers and merchants set sail.

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Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: VSTEP
System requirements: Windows XP (Min. service pack 2), Windows Vista or Windows 7, 32 and 64 bits OS supported; 2GB RAM (Windows XP) or 3GB (Vista or Windows 7); 3 Ghz P4 Intel or AMD equivalent processor; Geforce 8800GT or ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 256MB ram (Shader model 3.0); 3.5GB hard drive space; DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card; DirectX Version 9.0c; broadband Internet connection required for multiplayer
Genre: Simulation

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Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Neocore Games
System requirements: Windows XP/SP2/Vista/Windows 7; AMD64 3500+ or Pentium IV 3.2 GHz; 1 GB RAM (XP) or 1.5 GB RAM (Vista); 7 GB hard disk space; Nvidia 6600 (256MB) / ATI Radeon X70 (256MB) video card; DirectX 9 compliant sound card; DirectX 9.0c or higher
Genre: Strategy
ESRB rating: Teen
Release date: October 8, 2010

It is time once again to grab your virtual sword and rush off to war, this time in Neocore’s Lionheart: Kings’ Crusade. Set amidst the epic struggle between Richard and Saladin, players are presented with a strategy game that focuses on tactical battles with some strategic RPG elements, including upgradable units and special heroes. Not quite an RTS, and not quite a Total War clone, Lionheart attempts to give players a strategic gaming experience during the Third Crusade, without tying them down to the historical outcome of the conflict.

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My colleague Michael Smith wrote an excellent review for the recent move of LOTRO to free-to-play. And he provided an excellent summary of new mechanics and technical features in the game. However, I can tell that he did not have time to play through the substantial end-game content that was provided with the most recent update. This is understandable. The level cap is currently at 65, and just leveling to 65 does not even remotely qualify someone for running endgame content, as class traits, virtues, and legendary traits are all a part of end-game preparation. The grinding for some of these deeds can be time consuming, so it would be asking too much to expect him to have magically leveled all the way up, ground the appropriate deeds, and run the end-game content several times over all in a matter of a few weeks. Instead, I figured I would chime in on how the new content impacts high end characters since I am at the level cap and familiar with the content. And since I am not writing an actual review, I can focus on more specific issues, rather than summarize the entire game experience with a few, well chosen words.

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