Games HOT SPOT - Top 5 Most Wanted

World of WarCraft: Wrath of the Lich King

While Blizzard continues to service its 12 million plus player base with free upgrades to World of WarCraft (the most recent being the massive version 3.0 patch bringing a stack of new things to play with), it’s the next expansion pack Wrath of the Lich King which has players giddy with anticipation.

Like WoW’s first expansion pack The Burning Crusade (TBC), WotLK will bring a whole heap of new content and raise the player cap another ten levels. This time, characters can hit a maximum of level 80, complete with new abilities befitting the increase in power and experience.

While The Burning Crusade took the action through the Dark Portal and off-world to the Outlands, WotLK brings players back to WoW’s main world of Azeroth to the snow capped areas in its northern reaches. Blizzard claims the new lands of WotLK will be larger than those introduced in TBC.

Following on from events in WarCraft III: The Frozen Throne (and TBC), players will come against the fallen prince Arthas (aka The Lich King) and his undead forces as they attempt to take control of Azeroth.

Aside from the thousands of new items including weapons and armour sets being created, there’s a new inscription profession allowing players to boost spells and abilities, new dungeons offering custom 5 or 25-player challenges, and a new character class, the Death Knight. This powerful new class of knight melds brute strength with magical capabilities.

Player versus player (PVP) combat is also being updated with a new battleground, as well as new vehicle and siege mechanics offering more challenging and detailed skirmishes against the Horde or the Alliance.
Blizzard’s commitment to fresh content for WoW looks set to continue with Wrath of the Lich King, and in this case players are set for not only quantity, but quality as well.

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Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning

Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning is the latest massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) to be released and it’s already taking the world by storm.

Set in the richly detailed Warhammer universe (started as a table-top strategy game 25 years ago by company Games Workshop), Warhammer Online allows you to choose between the human, dwarf and elf run Armies of Order, or the greenskin run Armies of Chaos. Once a side is selected, a powerful character class is chosen and players enter the world, battling real and computer controlled characters as they gain experience and power.
Featuring a strong player-versus-player (PVP) system allowing for massive online battles, Warhammer Online is a great alternative to the other big MMORPGs out there like World of Warcraft.

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Age of Conan – The Hyborian Adventures

A massively multiplayer online role playing game -much like World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online - Age of Conan is instead set in Robert E Howard's Conan universe and details the struggles of the people in the land of Hyboria.

Choosing one of a dozen different player classes (be it assassin, barbarian, magician or a number of a hybrids of these), you set off to find fame and fortune for your online character as you play with - or against - thousands of other real players.

Featuring 80 character levels, a rich online combat system and deep player-versus-player combat, AoC should delight players looking for high and epic adventure.

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Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare arms gamers with an arsenal of advanced and powerful modern day firepower and transports them to the most treacherous hotspots around the globe.

At last, the Call of Duty series has moved beyond World War II and into the present day. Infinity Ward has also most certainly put a lot of work into adding a healthy variety to CoD4's gameplay, something often thought lacking from military shooters in the past. Firefights range from claustrophobic shootouts in a surging container ship to ranged combat in the wide-open paddocks of Russian farmland. In short, you'll never feel like you're just doing the same-old-same-old missions ad nauseam - which, is obviously an awesome thing.

Call of Duty 4 looks simply amazing. In an era in which most developers are rushing to get their hands on Epic's renowned Unreal Engine 3, Infinity Ward has instead developed its own proprietary game engine that has resulted in arguably the best looking FPS in recent memory. It's very easy to break it down into bullet points - the state of the art true world-dynamic lighting, bloom effects, dynamic shadows and depth of field graphical tricks and tech - but all that needs to be said is that the game is just staggeringly realistic, particularly coupled with the incredible audio; the guns shake your surround sound setup down to the ground and the convincingly conversational chatter between the troops is in stark contrast to the deliberately silly one-liners of Halo 3's marines.

Here's the bottom line; when it comes to its single-player experience, Call of Duty 4 manages to blast away the Xbox 360's biggest gun, Halo 3. There, we said it. Blasphemous perhaps, but true. Couple that with a multiplayer component that increases exponentially in scope and enjoyment the more you play it, and you've got a shooting package that not only rivals Bungie's masterpiece, but it outdoes it in many ways as well.

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World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade

World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, an MMORPG game, is the exciting new expansion to Blizzard's award-winning massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Alrighty then, before we get this review started we need to get some important information/ ominous warnings out of the way first. To begin with, Burning Crusade is not a stand alone game, so you'll need the original World of Warcraft game to bask in this expansion packs love. Secondly, it grants existing players -who have maxed out their characters level to 50- a chance to aspire to an epic level 70. And thirdly it is an expansion pack guaranteed to reignite your Warcraft addiction and will be wholly responsible for many a long gaming night, day, night, day - we think that you're getting the idea...

After all that time spent leveling, instancing, grinding in the original Wow, this new expansion picks up several years after the events of the original game. With renewed strength the heroes of the Horde and the Alliance have begun exploring new sections of land and have even broken through the Dark Portal into the mysterious continent of Outland. Unfortunately - or, fortunately for the brave- this means hordes of demons and epic bosses will be attacking your "not-as-awesome-as-I-first-thought" character.

In addition to the increase of the level 70 cap; your new quest is made more bearable by the inclusion of new flying mounts, hundreds more items, socketed items - and most important of all - two new races: the Blood Elves and the Draenei. Basically the Draenei let the goody-two-shoes Alliance players finally have a Shaman-esque class, and the Blood Elves offer Horde fans a chance to bust out some evil Paladin justice.

While it's true that this expansion pack doesn't revolutionizing for the World of Warcraft, aficionados will still get their rocks off with Burning Crusade as it is jam packed full of interesting new content, which ultimately translates into fresh new adventures in Azeroth. Fans are well advised to make the purchase and do their part in helping out either the noble Alliance or the insidious Horde. Preferably the Horde - because good is dumb.

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