The add-on will introduce five new dungeons, over 20 side quests, and multiple new locations including the city of Idylla, which is described as floating above the Teeth of Naros plains. It will also outfit players with nine new armor sets, six new shields, 18 unique weapons, and three new Twists of Fate which will likely come in hand for giant slaying.

This is the second DLC to wash up on Kingdoms of Amalur’s shores. The first, Legend of Dead Kel (check out: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning’s “The Legend of Dead Kel” DLC release date pegged for March 20) took players on a swashbuckling journey to the island of Gallows End. Will giants and floating cities compare to skeletons and pirates? We’ll see when Teeth of Naros lumbers in to PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, Origin, and Steam on April 17.

The post Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckonings Teeth of Naros DLC release date set for April appeared first on Game News.

When kings will be born, how they’ll die, who they’ll right and who they’ll wrong, whether or not the chef’s pastries will be burnt or come out sufficiently flaky – it’s all predetermined in the world of Amalur, a land where fate is cold, hard fact. Everyone’s fate is written in stone, and they’re destined to follow it to a T. Except you. As the “Fateless One” (a name only rivaled by “The Dragonborn” of Skyrim when it comes to coolness), you have the power to reshape Amalur and fight an evil that threatens to destroy the world.

Shocking, right? An RPG where the fate of the world rests in your hands. Luckily, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is more than an RPG cliché, and proves that there’s plenty of room in the action RPG genre outside of Tamriel and Albion.

It’s the fate of the world

Above: You start off the game extremely dead

Yes. The world is at stake. There’s a war going on between the mortals of Amalur and the immortal Fae, which, as you can expect, isn’t going well for the mortals.

After being killed in battle you’re resurrected by a mysterious contraption called the Well of Souls, which is destroyed almost immediately after your revival. Your memory is erased. The gnome that resurrected you has disappeared. You have no idea what is going on. Even stranger, Fateweavers – gifted individuals who can read the threads of fate and accurately predict your future – can’t see a thing. Turns out that since your pre-destined book of destined fate or whatever was closed upon your death, you’re free from its binds, and you’re the first person in Amalur who is truly free to do… anything, really.

Which is great, because the Fae are on track to wreck up everything. Even though they’re usually peaceful and benevolent, they’ve recently been riled up by Gadflow, an evil maniac with motives that expand well beyond wiping out all mortal life. And there’s more bad news: Gadflow isn’t fated to be slain by any mortals. Lucky for the world, your character doesn’t really care all that much about fate. It’s an awesome premise, and one that plays into the story very well.

Around the world in 40 hours

We finished the main campaign in just over 40 hours of play. That, alone, is an impressively long game, but we’re going to be completely honest: we skipped a lot of side quests, and didn’t complete all of the different Faction’s quests. Those 40-plus hours were spent doing a smattering of missions in each town on our way through the core storyline, and we passed dozens and dozens of yellow exclamation points (denoting new quests) in each area. And there were a lot of areas.

Every town we visited was filled with NPCs eager to toss some coin our way to clear out a cave, take down some trolls, or to find their lost item. After a while, we had to just ignore them so that we’d actually have a chance to finish the game in time for review. If we did them all – or even attempted to do them all – we could see the game lasting two to three times as long. Easily.

There was another reason we started avoiding side quests after completing the first few, though: they weren’t always interesting. Some were narrative-driven adventures that expanded the lore of Amalur, teaching us more about the world while we hunted down treasure or fought beasts. Others were by-the-books MMORPG quests, which got old fairly fast. Kill 10 rats for no reason? Go interact with this rock pile? Nah. We’re good. Thankfully, the game’s strong combat and rewarding loot system make it so even the most mundane quests were still enjoyable, even if they just never felt all that necessary.

Above: Everyone here has a job for you

As we became more involved in the different Faction quests, our overall mission became somewhat muddled. We’d go off the map for a few hours, killing rats and finding rings for random townspeople, and by the time we’d get back on track, we’d already forgotten about Badfwhatever and the war that’s supposedly going on. The world simply doesn’t look or feel as war-torn as it should, and many of the side-missions and Faction quests don’t really involve the world being enveloped in an all-out war.

The post Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning review appeared first on Game News.

Perhaps it seems a bit silly to be complaining about how a game will soon devour everyone’s free time, especially in this age where games are mostly getting shorter and we’re always crying about how we’re not getting our $60 worth, but dammit, we’re still terrified of certain impending releases because we’re gamers, and by god if we had the willpower to stop ourselves from playing games we wouldn’t be in this whole mess in the first place, would we? We swear we actually get heart palpitations and break out in a clammy sweat when we think about this handful of upcoming games, because any one of these could mean that we’ll miss out on every other good game for a while as we pound away at our obsession. These games aren’t necessarily long in the traditional sense, like old-fashioned RPGs that took a minimum of fifty hours, but rather these titles will likely have endless sidequests and general dicking-around options that we’ll choose to take a hundred hours before we begrudgingly schlep into the final quest.

The Nominees:

Dark Souls

Friggen’ Dark Souls is going to be so bad for us because not only will it eat a good sixty hours of our time, but half that time will be spent dying and cursing. We’re going to be miserable for a good portion of those hours, and we’re going to love every minute of that misery. If that doesn’t make sense, then you need to play Demon’s Souls. Now.Preview

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls games are always enormous timesinks (as anyone who’s played Oblivion or Morrowind can attest), filled with epic quests and optional tasks that can easily suck up hundreds of hours, and Skyrim promises to be the biggest one yet. Not only is it more ambitious than Oblivion, with sharper visuals, around 120 distinct dungeons and Bioshock 2-inspired, two-fisted weapon/spell-wielding, but its Radiant Story system will mix up pre-written quests with semi-randomized ones.Preview

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

We had no idea how huge this game would be until we learned some recent details, although do we really need to know more than that it has 120 unique dungeons (how did that end up as the same number as Skyrim)? Fine: there are hundreds of items which can be crafted into hundreds of other items, and the combat is more like God of War than Elder Scrolls, which means the combat alone will likely make us want to play this forever.Preview

Saints Row: The Third

We loved the shit out of Grand Theft Auto IV, but as a “sandbox game,” Saints Row: The Third makes it look as if Rockstar’s lost its way. Where are the needlessly violent Rampage missions, the skydiving gun fights, the civilian loss, and, for the love of god, the dildo-based weapons?! Well, thankfully, they’ve all taken up residence in Steelport, and this time around Volition Inc. decided a total lack of restraint is how to best present a wonderfully gratuitous open-world with an infinite amount of options for you and a co-op buddy. Care to fire a missile into a group of nuns from a supersonic jet you’re piloting in the nude? Saints Row: The Third has a place for you…Preview

And the winner
is%26hellip;

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

As promising as the other nominees look, we’re calling this one for Skyrim. Part of it is down to the game’s pedigree – like we said above, the previous Elder Scrolls games were legendary timesinks that ate up more weekends than we can count and took months to finish, and Fallout 3 – created by the same development team – was no less involving. However, Skyrim brings a host of additions that have us extremely intrigued, not the least of which are its dragons, which are huge, appear randomly and can grant you new powers once you’ve brought them crashing down to earth. There are smaller improvements as well, including villages with their own dynamic economies, a more customizable leveling system, an elaborate crafting system and a greater focus on story when exploring dungeons. It all adds up to a game that promises to dominate our lives this November, and we can’t wait to let it.

Above: Plus, furries

Jun 23, 2011

The Nominees:

Dark Souls

Friggen’ Dark Souls is going to be so bad for us because not only will it eat a good sixty hours of our time, but half that time will be spent dying and cursing. We’re going to be miserable for a good portion of those hours, and we’re going to love every minute of that misery. If that doesn’t make sense, then you need to play Demon’s Souls. Now.Preview

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Elder Scrolls games are always enormous timesinks (as anyone who’s played Oblivion or Morrowind can attest), filled with epic quests and optional tasks that can easily suck up hundreds of hours, and Skyrim promises to be the biggest one yet. Not only is it more ambitious than Oblivion, with sharper visuals, around 120 distinct dungeons and Bioshock 2-inspired, two-fisted weapon/spell-wielding, but its Radiant Story system will mix up pre-written quests with semi-randomized ones.Preview

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

We had no idea how huge this game would be until we learned some recent details, although do we really need to know more than that it has 120 unique dungeons (how did that end up as the same number as Skyrim)? Fine: there are hundreds of items which can be crafted into hundreds of other items, and the combat is more like God of War than Elder Scrolls, which means the combat alone will likely make us want to play this forever.Preview

Saints Row: The Third

We loved the shit out of Grand Theft Auto IV, but as a “sandbox game,” Saints Row: The Third makes it look as if Rockstar’s lost its way. Where are the needlessly violent Rampage missions, the skydiving gun fights, the civilian loss, and, for the love of god, the dildo-based weapons?! Well, thankfully, they’ve all taken up residence in Steelport, and this time around Volition Inc. decided a total lack of restraint is how to best present a wonderfully gratuitous open-world with an infinite amount of options for you and a co-op buddy. Care to fire a missile into a group of nuns from a supersonic jet you’re piloting in the nude? Saints Row: The Third has a place for you…Preview

And the winner
is%26hellip;

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

As promising as the other nominees look, we’re calling this one for Skyrim. Part of it is down to the game’s pedigree – like we said above, the previous Elder Scrolls games were legendary timesinks that ate up more weekends than we can count and took months to finish, and Fallout 3 – created by the same development team – was no less involving. However, Skyrim brings a host of additions that have us extremely intrigued, not the least of which are its dragons, which are huge, appear randomly and can grant you new powers once you’ve brought them crashing down to earth. There are smaller improvements as well, including villages with their own dynamic economies, a more customizable leveling system, an elaborate crafting system and a greater focus on story when exploring dungeons. It all adds up to a game that promises to dominate our lives this November, and we can’t wait to let it.

Above: Plus, furries

Jun 23, 2011

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