Borderlands is a game created by Gearbox Software and was released by 2K Games. Gearbox Software is known for games such as Half-Life, Halo and Brothers in Arms. So it's clear that Gearbox is one of the bigger development studios out there and that it has quite a legacy to it when it comes to games, however I personally think Borderlands could've been way better. Borderlands is a shooter/RPG game.

The storyline of Borderlands is the following, you start out on Pandora, which is a planet known for having treasure in a vault under the ground, the Vault opens every 200 years. On the planet Pandora there are few settlements because the environment is very hostile and most treasurers don't choose the good path but rather turn into bandits. You're send as a mercenary to open the vault and see what it contains, whilst remaining on the good side of the law, because the information you get from the settlers is very important in order to accomplish your goal.

The storyline is pretty cliché and you'll probably won't even bother to read any side information or listen to the woman that pops up in your upper-left screen every once in a while. My major problem with this game is that it tries to be two things at one and does a poor job at both of them, whilst they could've really made them work. I'll start with the gameplay, since that will make things a lot clearer. Borderlands is a shooter in that your weapons are guns and is an RPG in that you accumulate experience and your hits are displayed in numbers, along with an inventory system and quests. So where's the problem you might ask, well throughout the game you'll have to grind through tons and tons of enemies in order to complete quests or get level up. There's little variety in quests, there are only 3 types of quests, search-and-destroy, retrieving certain items and certain objectives. For the most part you're killing thousands upon thousands of enemies in order to level up, and I'm not even kidding here, I had to kill about 20,000 enemies in order to get to level 50. So it's pretty redundant to say that the gameplay gets stale rather quick.

The game doesn't really work like a regular shooter in which it just takes a few bullets in order to kill a certain enemy. In Borderlands you do a certain damage depending on a few factors such as your character's level and your gun experience level for that type of gun. So it's not really special that you sometimes have to shoot more than three cartridges in order to kill a normal enemy, if they happen to be a few levels higher than you. Not even mentioning the bossbattles, which will often lead you to deplete your ammunition for every gun type that you have. I find the inventory system to be an annoyance as well, because when you're completing quests in a rapid pace(it saves time to just accept every quest there is and do multiple quests in one area) you'll often lose track of your inventory since all these quests award you with equipment that you don't really need and when you find a gun or something else that you want to pick up, you're required to clean up your inventory first, by throwing out the stuff you just got from the quests.

It's also a shame that the creators of this game changed the graphics during the development of this game, at first they went for a Fallout 3 style look but later changed it to a cartoonesque style, similar to Prince of Persia. That's what also made it hard to be sucked into the game, the game had a cold, bland, empty feeling to it. Another thing that bothered me is that they re-use enemies a lot, I think there are only 6-7 different enemies in this game and they keep reappearing with different names, pallet-swaps and of course with better stats.

Soundwise there isn't anything that's the noteworthy neither on the bad or good side. The only thing that I thought could've been better is the background music, or the lack of there being background music. The only music that's in the game is the title music and combat music, whenever you get attacked you hear a song, but besides that there's no music at all, which doesn't really help with the fact that the game has a cold, bland, empty feeling to it.

My overall conclusion of this game is that it really let me down, I had been tracking this game for quite a while and I was disappointed when I got it. The repetitive grinding gameplay and the cold, bland, empty feeling to it, make that this game becomes boring pretty fast. If you were looking to buy this game I'd suggest trying your luck somewhere else, since this game isn't noteworthy on both the Shooter-side and the RPG-side. But the truth be told it isn't that bad, everything works like it's supposed to work, but the overall mediocrity makes the game a let-down, especially when you consider the fact that there was such a hype around this game. Oh yeah, about the millions of guns, that's a lie. Surely there are guns with different stats, but they all look pretty much the same, except for a few special ones but for the most part it's just the same gun with a different skin, different stats and a different name. They use the diablo-method of just randomizing the stats. So when you're considering to buy this game, I'd suggest trying your luck somewhere else.

The third title in the Red Alert series, it was released in 2008 by EA.

In RA3 you are introduced with a third faction, the Empire of the Rising Sun. This faction uses state of the art technologies, units and buildings. The other two remain the Allies and the Soviets

All three factions are playable in the campaign and start at the same time in the game. The intro shows you the Soviet Union at the brink of the defeat by the allies, most likely at the end of Red Alert 2: Yuri’s Revenge. By using a time machine general Krukov and colonel Cherdenko travel back in time to Brussels to the year of 1927, where the International Physics Conference is held. There they murder Albert Einstein, which prevents the Allies from obtaining technology that he would have created. When they travel back, they found out that the Soviet Union is winning the Third World War. But Einstein’s disappearance has had a second outcome. Without Einstein the Empire of the Rising Sun (a.k.a. Japan) has risen and declares war against the Allies and the Soviet Union. When Krukov and Cherdenko find out that they don’t have nuclear weapons because of Einstein’s existence, they are forced into a war on multiple fronts.

From that moment onwards all faction have a different storyline, though there are some points where the different campaigns are a bit parallel to each other. But with other scenarios and outcomes of course. Every campaign ends in the same way. the faction you chose at the beginning of the campaign achieves global domination. You always play with a co-commander in the campaign. You can choose play with a computer-controlled AI or with another player online.

RA3 introduces a new range of units and only a few buildings are left from the previous parts. The allies still have the chromosphere and a variant from RA2 prism tower, only this time it’s called the Spectrum Tower. The soviets are still using their mighty Kirov airships and the famous Tesla Coils. The Empire of the Rising Sun is really the only faction that had to be build from scratch. The Allied and Soviet units can find their roots in RA and RA2. Every unit in RA3 has a secondary ability which must be activated manually.

The only thing I find disappointing the balance in the game, because it's almost non-existent. And I will tell you why. The Allies have their bombers that can tear apart almost every unit and even worse their carriers. There's is almost nothing you can do against these monsters, they have only 2 drawbacks: their drones can be destroyed and they suck at close combat. The Soviets have an almighty ground advantage with tanks that can rip through everything especially in the early minutes of a match . And last but not least the Empire of the Rising Sun. To be honest, it isn’t really good at anything as it relies more on adaptability rather than specializing itself. Some examples are transformable submarines that can turn into planes and helicopters that can morph into two-legged walkers. This means that the Empire is a difficult faction to play with, for it has no distinctive strengths or weaknesses.

Each faction has their own way of constructing their base. When playing as the soviets your buildings will be assembled in the field, while the allies are using the traditional way of base building. What’s the normal way you say? Queuing up buildings and when ready place them in the field, immediately ready for use. The Empire uses a more mobile way of building. Its Construction Yard spits out construction vehicles, which can be deployed anywhere and assemble themselves on site.

Resource gathering has been changed but only for a bit. In RA and RA2 you would find concentrated fields of ore (resources), in RA3 resources are centralized in pits which are scattered around the battlefield. You usually have two of those pits at your start position. These pits make resource make harvesting a bit easier, because refineries can be build in front of them. Both the refineries and pits use rotating platforms turn the collectors around pointing them in the right way and while doing so they load and unload the vehicles. Though they have changed one thing. All resources are evenly split between you and your team-mates.

But this has a positive and negative side. The positive side is that you also get resources even when your refineries are destroyed ( only if your partner(s) has any refineries standing). The negative side is that you never get the full amount of resources that you gather, which can sometimes mean the difference between defeat and victory.

The graphics in RA3 have been increased to a ridiculous level where it becomes cartoony. The terrain sometimes looks better than the units. But the one thing that draw my attention is the big detail of the water. It looks excellent when you compare it to the rest of the game. You can see shockwaves appearing in the water during naval battles.

To conclude this review, I had some fun playing this game. It's too bad that there's little balance in the game. But I would still recommend this game for a buy because it's not that bad and it's part of the Red Alert Universe.

Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit is a racing game developed by EA Canada and published by EA. The game was released in 1998 for Windows and Playstation. The police plays a big role in this game, because they try to arrest you and your opponent while racing on several tracks.

This game has no storyline, but has several game modes in which you can earn new cars and a new track. These modes are: Single Race, Tournament, Knock-Out and Hot Pursuit. Single Race is self-explanatory. Tournament is championship mode, in which you have to race on eight tracks against seven other racers. In Knock-Out you also have to race on eight tracks, but in this elimination mode the racer who finishes last is eliminated. In Hot Pursuit you can race against one racer, but the main objective is to outrun the police or to arrest six AI racers (Windows version). If you manage to outrun the police for a longer period, they will set up road blocks and spike strips to slow you down.

Tactical aspects of the police pursuits have also been improved since the last game. The police have the ability to deploy roadblocks (which simply consists of lining up police cars across the road) and spike strips (which puncture the tires of a racer's car that runs over the strip, and halts the car). Both tactics present weaknesses, specifically, gaps in the blockade that can be used by a racer to avoid collisions with police cars or tire punctures from a spike strip. The player may also listen to police radio chatter on the pursuits' statuses, revealing the current locations of racers, police cars, as well as roadblocks and spike strips.

It's also possible to play this game split-screen. In split-screen Tournament mode there are only two other racers instead of seven in singleplayer. In Knock-Out there is only one other racer in split-screen, but both players have to finish ahead of the AI racer in order to proceed to the next track. In Hot Pursuit both players can race each other to the finish or one player can be the police and has to arrest the other player (only in the Windows version).

When starting a track, you can change the weather conditions. You can also race in day-or night time, or change the amount of laps you have to race. When playing Hot Pursuit you can get more fines when racing more laps, but when you aren't fined for a long time (let's say four laps on an eight lap race) you're arrested right away when you get caught.

The graphics of this game are, considering that this game is made in 1998, very good. I have only one complaint. When you drive behind an AI racer or police car, it seems that they're floating above the track, since they change driving lanes much faster than you can change lanes.

The sound of this game is okay. The soundtrack playing in a race changes when something happens to you.

I own this game on my Playstation, and I have to say that I had a lot more fun with that version of the game than the Windows version. The difference between these games is that the police talks to you, and not to each other, just like in the Windows version and when they talk to you it's more fun. For example, when you hit a police car he screams (mostly when he crashes) or you can hear him say 'Hey, this is a new paint job' and you don't hear that with the Windows version. However, the graphics of the Windows version are a little bit better. The gameplay itself however, is very funny. It's even more fun when you play it with a friend.

LOTR: Conquest is a third-person action game developed by Pandemic Studios and published by Electronic Arts in January 2009 for PS3, Xbox 360, Windows and Nintendo DS.
The game uses elements of the movie, but also from the original book written by JR Tolkien.

The game follows parts of the movies and the novels, but they let their imagination loose and put parts in it that really didn't make any sense. One example is the Battle of Minas Morgul, which never took place in the novels.

There are five different classes:
-the Archer, A long ranged unit with a bow and arrow that plays like a third-person shooter. Different types of arrows can be equipped: fire arrows, which can knock down enemies and deal explosive damage; poison arrows, which slow enemies down and do damage over time, and the ability to fire a volley of three normal arrows at multiple enemies at once. They also have a kick for use in close-quarters, which knocks back the enemy. They can also hit stealthed Scouts with the multiple arrow skill. A headshot will allow the archer to kill most enemies in a single hit, but that's virtually impossible online because of the MASSIVE lag.

-the Warrior: A melee combat unit which uses swordsmanship. Unlike the other classes, whose special attacks recharge over time, warriors can only gain strength by defeating enemies, which allows them to unleash more powerful attacks with a flaming sword, such as spinning to hit every adjacent enemy. They are the only class that can block or perform counterattacks with special moves. The warrior also has a throwing axe as a secondary, medium ranged weapon. You don't want to be playing this class when playing online. The warrior's only purpose is playing target practice for the mage and scout.

-The Scout: A master in the art of moving unseen. The scout’s primary weapons are two daggers, and he has the ability to become temporarily invisible and assassinate units instantly from behind with a sneak attack. As a secondary attack, he carries satchel bombs filled with blasting powder as a ranged attack. Listen to me! Listen to me carefully, I control your brains. This class is the most hated class online. Only the weak and most pathetic persons will use this class. These BACKSTABBING bastards are your primary targets online. You will show no mercy when you encounter these weaklings.

-The Mage: A mage's primary attack is a bolt of lightning, which can be charged up for a more powerful attack that can also damage other enemies in close proximity to the target. He also wields a “firewall” attack, which creates an expanding circle of flames that will heavily damage if not kill enemies who are within the circle. For close range attacks, they have a shockwave attack, which knocks enemies back and allows the mage to finish them off with his staff. Mages can also heal allies. For defensive purposes, a mage can create a magical shield around himself to protect anyone inside from ranged attacks of any sort, provided the attacker is outside of the shield, which allows people to walk through. While the shield ability is active, the mage is unable to do anything else and is therefore highly vulnerable to melee attacks. This unit is overpowered when playing online, as people tend to use the mage a lot.

- The Heroes: These units are not that different from the normal classes, they're only a bit harder to kill, except when you're playing a backstabbing bastard. Then it's only an assassination away, because they aren't immune to the 'special' backstabbing ability that the scout possesses.
Their attacks and special attacks are the same, they also move the same as the normal classes. But you can only choose them when you have a certain amount of points or when you are playing a Hero Team Deathmatch.

You're also able to play as special units. The good side has the Ents and the bad side Cave Trolls. These units are much stronger than the normal units, but there are only a few of these units available at the same time.

The game also has multiplayer. The game modes aren't very special. You're able to play a few game modes, like Team Deathmatch, Capture the Ring and Hero Team Deathmatch. On PS3, the max amount of players is 16 and no bots are added, so the battles online are very empty. At first I was able to play this game online on my PS3, but after a couple of months they shut down the European servers. I think they realized what abomination they've created and saved us from further infection of the brains.

The graphics of this game aren't bad, but they aren't special too. You should think that the creators of the Star Wars Battlefront series could do better than this, but unfortunately they didn't. I even think that the graphics of Star Wars Battlefront II are better than those of this game.

So in the end, I think you should steer clear of this game, especially when you're a fan of the LOTR novels and movies. I also think that Pandemic Studios could do way better than this, because they've showed that with the Battlefront series.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is the second game in the Uncharted series, with the first game(Uncharted: Drake's Fortune) being released in November 2007, and the Uncharted 2: Among Thieves in October 2009 . Both games follow the story of Nathan Drake, an explorer that got dragged into an adventure when he found about Sir Francis Drake, who's a long dead relative who travelled around the world exploring stuff. Both games were developed by Naughty Dog and were published by Sony Entertainment. This game is an action-adventure game.

In Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Drake is looking for a long lost treasure, throughout his journey he'll meet many old buddies and some new ones. You'll start out by hanging from a train that has somehow fallen of a cliff (which you'll later have to face again, since it's a leap in the future) and as you progress you'll see various cutscenes explaining what you're going to do in the next level and it's explained as well what it is you're after. After that you'll be betrayed by your best friend Flynn. As you progress throughout the game it'll become clear why your friend betrayed you and who's actually to blame for all the trouble Drake gets in throughout the game. You'll also start unravelling the big picture. But in the end all will be good, except for one good guy, but he was merely a figurant. Things will be set right and the bad guy will be put down. The storyline of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves isn't extremely original but the way it has been executed is simply amazing, the entire game feels like a movie in that it keeps you captivated from beginning to end.

The gameplay in this game is really varied, offering a fun experience from beginning to end. There are sections in which you have to shoot a lot of enemies, there are sections in which you have to climb in order to reach a certain point, there are sections in which you'll have to figure out puzzles and there are some sections in which you have to kill boss-like enemies. The execution of the gameplay makes it so that you'll never be bored playing this game and that you can play this game for hours on an end. Climbing feels very smooth although it's often overly obvious which route you should take, but that can be easily forgiven since it prevents you from getting stuck in certain areas. The shooter-aspect of this game is also executed well, everything feels smooth and natural, this aspect is also blended in nicely with the climbing aspect which means that you can shoot enemies whilst hanging from a ledge and many more. Another thing I'd like to add is that the enemies in this game can take a lot of bullets, which can get annoying when playing the game on Crushed since it could happen that you have to shoot an enemy with all the ammo you've got and still come short. The puzzles and the bosses aren't really that hard or complicated, most puzzles can be figured out in under a minute since the game gives you overly clear hints in your diary, which didn't really bother me since I hate puzzles. The bosses often have simple methods of killing them, however the simplicity of the killing method doesn't necessarily mean that these bosses are easy, especially on the later levels you'll often find yourself trying to defeat the same boss over and over again, but once you've done it, it'll feel so rewarding.

The graphics in this game are simply magnificent, personally I thought they were even better than Assassin's Creed 2. The environments are so detailed and colourful that you'll be amazed every time you visit a new area in the game. The characters are extremely detailed as well, although slightly cartoony, they feel realistic, well except for the fact that the fact that most of these characters are invulnerable.

The sound in this game is great as well, every character in this game has convincing voice-acting and the sounds of explosives and such are rather realistic as well. The music in this game has an epic adventure feel to it, it makes you feel throughout the game that you've embarked on a huge and epic quest, so in that perspective it really adds to the game rather than just filling the silence.

New in the series is that they've added an online mode for this game, which allows you to play both competitive and co-operative. There are many edited standard modes in this game, such as Capture the Treasure, Team Deathmatch(no normal Deathmatch), Survival and many other. The sad part of online modes is that they're completely dependant on their online community and sadly after playing a few matches I came to realise that I didn't like the game online as much as I did offline. Some online players seem to have find it extremely funny to just wait next to you until you die instead of reviving you and this is just one example of the entire list. So I'd recommend to just buy this game mainly for its single-player mode and maybe for the co-op mode online with friends, and besides this game emphasis lies on its single-player mode. Multiplayer, besides these standard modes, also features leaderboards and a leveling system in which you can unlock stuff, just like in single-player in which you can unlock various bonuses with money you've earned getting certain medals and some of these medals also grant you a trophy. The leveling in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is simply done by accumulating money that's granted with kills, getting medals and completing objectives.

My conclusion is that every PS3 owner should at least try this game or buy it, because you won't regret it, it offers a lot of gameplay, has beautiful graphics, a well-executed story and a great feel to it. This is one of THE games of 2009, sharing the same league as for example Assassin's Creed 2.

BFMEII is an RTS developed and published by Electronic Arts. It is based on the fantasy novels The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien and the film trilogy. The game is the sequel of The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth. The Windows version of the game was released on March 2, 2006 and the Xbox 360 version was released on July 5, 2006. A Windows expansion pack for the game was released on November 28, 2006, called The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch-king, which features a new faction known as Angmar and new units.

The story of BFMEII is divided into Good and Evil Campaigns. The Good Campaign focuses on Glorfindel, an Elf who is alerted to a planned attack on the Elven sanctuary of Rivendell. With help from the Dwarves and other Good forces, the Elves attempt to eliminate Sauron and his army to restore peace in Middle-earth. In the Evil Campaign, Sauron sends the Mouth of Sauron and the Nazgûl to muster wild Goblins. With his army, Sauron moves forward with his plan to destroy the remaining Good forces in the North.

The most important building of this game is the fort. You need a fort to train builders and revive or summon heroes. You're able to upgrade your fort and build defensive structures attached to it, like catapult towers and walls.

Besides the campaign, there is also a war of the ring mode. In this tactical mode, Middle-earth is divided into territories; players can construct buildings to produce troops only in a claimed territory. During each turn, the player can move their armies into neutral and enemy territories to take control of them. While neutral territories are conquered by simply entering them, enemy territories must be wrested from the other player by defeating them in a real time battle. Troops can be garrisoned in conquered territories to defend against enemy attacks. When the player chooses to attack another territory, or one of their territories is being invaded by an enemy, they can either simulate the match and let the computer determine the outcome (sometimes it's better to do that, because you will lose anyway, and when skipping it you won't lose much of your precious time), or play the match by commanding the units in real time. The winner of the skirmish gains the territory, and all surviving units gain experience points. To win the game, you must either control the enemy's capital territory, or take over a given number of territories in Middle-earth. The only problem is that these battles take way to much time. Most of the time the enemy has more units when starting a battle, so it's guaranteed that it'll take longer to defeat your enemy and also much harder.

Just like in all RTS's you'll need resources to create buildings and training units. Each faction has their own unique building that provides resources. For example, the Elves need some sort of a tree (which can be build) to gather resources, while the Humans gather resources from farms. There is only one resource type, which is a bit strange, since you make buildings and units out of it. How is it possible to harvest building material out of a farm? I don't know, but in this game it is possible.

When playing this game for the first time, the graphics of the game are on a very low setting. At first, I didn't know that so I almost had to puke. Luckily, the graphics can be adjusted, and when playing it on the highest graphics possible it is bearable to sit through. The only problem is that the battles itself aren't that entertaining. With most RTS's, like Age of Empires, I get a wonderful feeling when starting a match, and I don't mind that it will take several hours to complete the level. But with this game I just want to complete the game as fast as possible and never look back again.

In conclusion: I don't like this game, it's fun to play for a couple of hours, but then it gets annoying. But I can understand why some LOTR fans like this game. The game is bearable when you play it on very high graphics.