Prototype is an action adventure game that was developed by Radical Entertainment and published by Activision in 2009. I have played the pc version.

The game takes place in present time New York City, on the island of Manhattan to be specific, where a horrific virus is spreading through the streets. The entire island has been put under quarantine by the US Marine Corps to prevent the spread of the virus.

You play as Alex mercer, person with no memory of his past and with the ability to change his body parts into various weapons and defenses, and the ability to consume other persons and take their identity, memories and their entire body.

When starting a new game you are taught how to move, attack and change your body. In this stage the virus is at its peak. After completing this level you flashback to the beginning of the outbreak. By completing the primary missions you progress in the game. After completing a certain amount of those missions, you get a flash-forward and a part of the story is revealed. This Is however not entirely right. To uncover the history and facts around the game, you can consume targets for your Web of Intrigue. When you consume a target you get a small video which gives a few hints about what happened during and what happened before the events that take place in the game. Back to the primary missions. After the fast-forward, you get another flashback. when that happens the days change and a percentage is given to show you how many people are infected in the city. You work your way from day one up to day eighteen.

Next to the primary missions you also have side missions. These can vary from consuming targets, killing a certain amount of infected or marines or running and jumping through a course.

With completing missions, consuming and killing enemies or innocent people you get Evolution Points. These points can be spent on increasing your survivability or making you more deadly in combat by unlocking special moves and new powers.

Alex has an arsenal of deadly weapons that he can use. Some have to be unlocked first with EP. An example of one of those weapons are the claws. This is my favorite weapon. Every weapon has a basic attack and a special attack. The reason why I love this weapon is because with this attack you can rise up spikes of biomass from underneath the ground and impale anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the radial area of damage. So yeah, I love it. But the most devastating powers in the game are the Devastator attacks. These attacks are the superweapons in his arsenal. But I will not be a spoiler and will let you discover what these things can do.

But the fun doesn’t end there. After a while, Alex is able to pilot certain military vehicles. At first there are only Black Hawk and Bradleys, but as the situation in the city escalates, more and more heavy equipment is brought in, so you’ll end up driving Abrams and Apaches.

You can speak of two factions in Prototype. The first group is the US Marine Corp, who are commanded by the black operation, Blackwatch. The marines orders are to contain the virus, but are really used as shock troopers, soldiers who do the heavy damage and take the full blow i.e. casualties. Now Blackwatch is a nasty organization, they do the clean up after the work is done and are the real badguys that want to take you down by any means necessary.

The other faction are the infected. You have the population that has gone berserk, trying to kill every non-infected, and you have the abominations. The result of the virus transforming their host into something else. You have some minor abominations, as I would call them, that are not that powerful. But the other ones, called Hunters, are the ones that can really ruin your day. These creatures from hell are twice the size of a normal human and with a lot more muscles.

The game looks pretty good. In combat you will see bodyparts and blood flying freely through the air. The city itself might feel a bit empty, and I mean that most of it looks the same with a few subtle differences. But on the streets its chaos when the virus finally goes crazy. You will see soldiers firing at infected, civilians running for their lives, infected people and Hunters.

Though I have some complaints about the game. You will find yourself doing the same things over and over, but you will be too busy to really care about that. Moving around the city, especially in combat, can be quite chaotic. This really comes to light when driving ground vehicles, they drive towards where you are pointing at. And that’s where the controls get weird, but you really have to experience that yourself. And my final complaint is that combat can be incredibly annoying. Sometimes you are chased from one end of the map to the other end, but also that some special moves of the Hunters can’t be countered or stopped.

So my conclusion of Prototype, I really good game. It has it flaws but that’s common in every game. A nice storyline and awesome moves make this game awesome.

Dune 2000 is a RTS developed by Westwood Studios and Intelligent Games and was released in 1998 on Windows and later ported on the Playstation. The game is based on Frank Herbert's Dune universe.

Emperor Corrino has issued a challenge that the House which can produce the most spice will control its source, the desert planet Dune, with no rules as to how the Houses can achieve the goal. However, when you're playing with the Harkonnen (the evil House), the Emperor will eventually team up with the Atreides and tries to destroy you, how ironic. Meanwhile, Lady Elara of the Bene Gesserit and bound concubine to the Emperor, secretly takes the commander (you) into one of the Heighliners, a person whose bloodline and future the Sisterhood had checked. According to Elara, they saw many visions of the commander dying many times and only in one vision does the commander live and even rise to control massive armies and bring peace to Arrakis.

I will explain the three Houses below, as taken from the intro.

House Atreides- Hailing from the water-planet of Caladan, the Atreides have a strict loyalty to their Duke and follow him with zeal. The Duke's famous Mentat, Noree Moneo, advises and resides over the Duke's forces on Arrakis. The House's fleets of ornithopters ensure their superior air power. The Duke also wishes to develop an alliance with the Fremen, the native warriors of Dune.

House Harkonnen- The Harkonnen are ruled by the wicked Baron and come from the volcanic waste-planet of Giedi Prime. According to Lady Elara, the only thing human about the Harkonnen is their genetic makeup, as all humanity was abandoned long ago in favor of brutality and maliciousness. The Baron's Mentat, Hayt De Vries, was born from the flesh of a dead man in the Tleilaxu Flesh Vats.

House Ordos- The Ordos originate from a frigid, ice covered planet unnamed in Dune 2000 but later called Sigma Draconis IV in Emperor: Battle for Dune. As they import their goods from nearby star systems, House Ordos relies on their skills as merchants to make their profits; however, their wealth has made them increasingly paranoid. According to the manual, House Ordos buys all of its units instead of constructing them themselves. Unlike the other two houses, House Ordos is not mentioned in any of Frank Herbert's Dune novels.

There are also four non-playable subfactions: House Corrino, the Fremen, the Mercenaries and the Smugglers.

Spice is the main resource in the game, which you have to collect with harvesters. It is advised to regularly check where your harvesters are, because there are always giant worms around, and those worms sometimes consume your harvester. You'll know that a worm is there when you see sparks coming out of the ground. With spice you can purchase everything ranging from infantry to building upgrades. Before placing a building you'll have to place concrete, because otherwise it's health is not at 100% but will decrease to a certain point over time. You'll also need to build energy sources, Wind Traps. If you don't have enough energy the training and building process is slowed down and your missile turrets and your radar won't operate. Your most valuable building is the Construction Site. If you lose this building you won't be able to construct other buildings, unless you're able to build or order a Mobile Construction Verhicle from a Starport. When playing the singleplayer campaign I recommend you to seek and destroy your enemy's Construction Site before destroying the other buildings, because otherwise they'll just rebuild the buildings they've lost.

Although each house has many common units, such as infantry, Wind Traps, and Mobile Construction Vehicles, each House also has its own set of units, such as the Atreides Sonic Tank, the Ordos Deviator and the Harkonnen Devastator. Houses Harkonnen and Atreides share the Trike, while House Ordos has an upgraded version, the Raider. Like many games of the Westwood franchise, a player can gain access to other Houses' special units by capturing an enemy building and manufacturing the desired units.

The graphics of this game aren't that special, but I think they're good enough for a game from 1998. There isn't really much to say about the level design, because you play on a desert planet and everything looks the same. This game received a lot of criticism from the hoax called GameSpot, because they thought the game's production value was 'drab' for 1998 standards. Whatever they thought, I, on the contrary, had a lot of fun with this game. I spend many hours playing this game, it can be very challenging at times.

Sins of a Solar Empire has been developed by Stardock and Ironclad Games.
Since its release, two micro-expansions have been released, Entrenchment and Diplomacy.
Entrenchment’s main focus was defence and introduces new ships, the ability of deploying mine fields and the option of building powerful starbases in the gravity belts of planets.
There’s not much to tell about the Diplomacy as it speaks for itself. It grants you the ability of making pacts with other factions.
The third micro-expansion hasn’t been announced yet, but will be the last one.

Sins of a Solar Empire is a mix between space-based RTS and a genre called 4X. 4X means that the player controls an empire and has to, and I quote, to explore, expand, exploit and exterminate. This game follows the rules of the 4X-genre for a big portion. At the beginning of a new game, your first tasks are building ships, scouting new planets and colonizing them, starting your economy and start research.

There are 3 factions you can play:
- the TEC, the Trader Emergency Coalition. Founded after the invasion of the Vasari and the Advent and is a cooperation between independent empires.
- The Vasari. It’s the only alien race in SoaSE. The Vasari were once a great civilization and expanded its empire by assimilating other civilizations. Because of hysteria on a galactic scale in the Vasari empire, a small colony fled the empire, eventually ended up in human territory. And in this territory they fight against the TEC and the Advent over resources.
- The Advent. Originally a religious sect, they were driven out before the rise of the TEC. This faction uses psychic powers to manipulate populations and to destroy their enemies.

The first downside of the game comes to light shortly after starting the game. That’s because the game doesn’t feature a campaign mode, which is a shame. The 3 factions have a long history together and a campaign could’ve made good use of that.

Your main resources are metal, crystal and credits. Metal and crystals can be harvested by placing mines on top of asteroids containing metal or crystal. Additional metal and crystal can be obtained by building refineries. Credits are created by planets and by trade stations. But these are the normal ways of obtaining the game’s resources, the other one is by selling or buying metal or crystal at the black market.

When you colonize a planet, the planet is unable to create credits due to the fact that they are under developed and suffers from operating costs. So instead of making credits it consumes its. For the planet to create credits, you first have to invest metal, crystal and credits into upgrading its infrastructure. Next to upgrading a planet’s infrastructure, you can also invest in increasing a planets hitpoints by building emergency facilities. Two other upgrades grants you the option of building more civilian and tactical structures in the planet’s orbit. And finally you can invest in exploring the planet for natural resources, relics etc.

Combat in Sins of a Solar Empire is slow. And by slow I mean it takes a while before a battle is over. That’s not only due to the fact that ships (not talking about the structures) have shields and armor that constantly recharges, but also because reinforcements can be brought in at all times. The galaxy never stops in Sins. Almost every frigate and cruiser has a special power to be used in combat. This can be to increase the damage output for a moment or to support other ships in battle.
Capital ships are the heavy guns in Sins. They can possess more than one ability. They are the only ships that can earn experience points and level up. Experience points are earned by destroying enemy ships in combat. Every faction has 5 ships to choose from ranging from all out combat ships to support ships.

The AI in Sins is pretty smart and get smarter in the expansions that followed. It can really be a pain, but it has an addiction. It seems that it can’t get enough of building countless frigates, while neglecting capitals and cruisers. But you won’t hear me complaining, this only gives impressive fleet battles and extends the amount of time you put into a single match.

I had a lot of fun playing this game and will continue in doing so. Though it lacks a campaign mode, it still is a solid RTS/4X game that will keep you busy for hours.
And for those planning to buy this game, Stardock has released Sins of a Solar Empire Trinity. It contains the original game and the two expansions, Entrenchment and Diplomacy.

Europa Universalis III is a historical strategy game made and released by Paradox Interactive in 2007. The game got three expansion packs: Napoleon's Ambition, In Nomine and Heir to the Throne. I myself own In Nomine.

Europa Universalis III is a very extensive game, just like Hearts of Iron III. You can choose from more than 250 nations that exist during the period of 1399-1820 (1453-1789 in the original game), including native American tribes, and try to establish a strong nation by conquering other nations by force or in a more diplomatic way by turning them into vassals.

A very important aspect of the game is the market. You have to get a strong position in the centres of trade to get additional income. With more income you can create a larger army. You can also invest money in certain fields of expertise, in which you want your country to develop in. These sectors are: Government, trade, naval, land and stability. When you invest in government you'll unlock more government types such as a merchant republic, which improves trading efficiency. When you invest in naval, you'll unlock better ships and your colony range will improve so you can colonize further away from your closest port. When you invest in land, your army will fight better and you will be able to create more advanced units. When turbulent times are there (such as war) it is needed to invest in stability, because revolts can occur. There are different types of revolts. For example, when you conquer territory you can expect patriotic revolts in that province. You can also put the money in your treasure chest and invest nothing, which is best to do in the beginning since you have low income.

Another thing that is extremely important is to have diplomatic relations with other countries, such as a military alliance, trade agreement (which is an agreement that makes sure that the two nations don't compete with each other) or royal marriage (government type has to be a monarchy), which greatly improves relations. When you have a royal marriage with another nation you can also claim there throne, which gives you a casus belly against them. When you have a casus belly against an other nation you won't lose as much stability as you would without a casus belly, and thus it's extremely useful.

In the beginning of the game most territory is still Terra Incognita, which means that that area isn't discovered yet. If you want to explore these area's you'll need explorers (naval) and conquistadores (land). When a discovered province lies in your colonization range, you can send a colonist to colonize the province. This will give you a lot of prestige, which gives you some additional bonuses, such as more tax income and more yearly merchants. You'll also get prestige by winning wars and by completing missions, such as: Free the Dutch people in Zeeland or build a large army.

You can also choose one of the national ideas (only when you have a free slot, more will come available over time) which give you an additional bonus, such as a higher moral for your armies, so that they can fight longer. Another thing you have to do is to make national and regional decisions. National decisions mostly are laws, while regional decisions are building an embassy in a certain province to improve relations with another nation.

There is also a list of structures that you can build to improve the economy of a province, such as a fort or weapons manufacturer. Most of these structures are very expensive and you'll also need more advanced technology for better buildings.

There isn't really much to say about the graphics, since you're looking at a world map. When comparing it to the first two games in the series, the graphics have been improved and it is the first Europa Universalis game that is in 3D.

I really liked playing this game. I'm still playing it today, experimenting with different nations. It's a great game, but you really have to be into the genre.