NANO

Nick: NANO Real name: Hizbullah How old are you?: 17 Which Games you play? and for how long?(each of them): PUBG (2 hrs) , GTA V (3-4 hrs) , Some Random Games Where are you from?(country and city): Abbottabad, Pakistan Describe yourself(at least 50 words): I am a Hardworking and helpful person.I am Friendly with Everyone so that people do not hesitate to contact me in any site of the problem.I remain positive and never have any thing negative in my mind.I Respect every Member in the Community and treat him as such. Note some of your qualities: Honest , Respectful , Polite and Pro Gamer. Tell us some of your defects: Sometime i take quick wrong decision. Had you before any kind of responsibilities(describe it): Global Moderator! On which category/categories have you been active lately?(describe your activity): Devil's Club (News) , WORLD OF GAMES [Cs Resources (Plugins , Maps , Skins)] Which category/project you want to care off?(choose from THIS LIST): Report Centre , Cs Resources , Free Time , F.A.Q How well you speak english?(and other languages): I can Speak English and Urdu in an efficient and understandable manner. Do you use TS3? Do you have an active microphone?: ofc. Contact methods: Facebook , TS3 , PM. Last request: First.

North Korea has said it will cut off all inter-Korean communication lines with the South, including a hotline between the two nations' leaders. The North said this was the first in a series of actions, describing South Korea as "the enemy".Daily calls, which have been made to a liaison office located in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, will cease from Tuesday.The two states had set up the office to reduce tensions after talks in 2018.North and South Korea are technically still at war because no peace agreement was reached when the Korean War ended in 1953.North Korea "will completely cut off and shut down the liaison line between the authorities of the North and the South, which has been maintained through the North-South joint liaison office... from 12:00 on 9 June 2020," the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) report said.Military communication channels will also be cut, North Korea said.When the liaison office was temporarily closed in January because of Covid-19 restrictions, contact between the two states was maintained by phone.The two Koreas made two phone calls a day through the office, at 09:00 and 17:00. On Monday, the South said that for the first time in 21 months, its morning call had gone unanswered, although contact was made in the afternoon."We have reached a conclusion that there is no need to sit face-to-face with the south Korean authorities and there is no issue to discuss with them, as they have only aroused our dismay," KNCA said.Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean leader's sister, threatened last week to close the office unless South Korea stopped defector groups from sending leaflets into the North.She said the leaflet campaign was a hostile act that violated the peace agreements made during the 2018 Panmunjom summit between the South's Moon Jae-in and Kim Jong-un.It's likely that this shut down isn't just about sending leaflets over the border - but instead, all part of a grander plan by Pyongyang.North Korea may be creating a crisis in order to use the tension as leverage in later talks. In short, it could be simply spoiling for a fight to get attention and ask for more from its neighbour.They've played this particular game before in 2013 to try to win more concessions from South Korea.It's also a good distraction domestically. Kim Jong-un is failing to deliver the economic prosperity he keeps promising and rumours continue to circulate that Covid-19 is affecting parts of the country. Giving the nation a common enemy helps rally his people back around a cause.It's worth noting one of the two signatures on this policy. Kim's sister, Kim Yo-Jong gave the order to sever ties with Seoul. This gives her a platform and the spotlight and will fuel more speculation that she is being groomed as a potential leader.But how disappointing this must be for the Moon administration. Two years ago in a wave of optimism, the country cheered as the two leaders met and agreed to keep the phone lines open. Now all calls to the North are not being picked up.North Korean defectors occasionally send balloons carrying leaflets critical of the communist region into the North, sometimes with supplies to entice North Koreans to pick them up.North Koreans can only get news from state-controlled media, and most do not have access to the internet.Ties between the North and South appeared to improve in 2018, when the leaders of both countries met three times. Such high-level meetings had not taken place in over a decade.But Pyongyang largely cut off contact with Seoul following the collapse of a summit between Kim and US president Donald Trump in Hanoi last year that left nuclear talks at a standstill.The two Koreas remain technically at war because the 1950-1953 Korean war ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.

New Zealand is set to lift almost all its coronavirus restrictions within hours as it reports there are no active cases in the country. It will move to level one, the lowest of its four-tier alert system, at midnight local time (12:00 GMT).Under this, social distancing will no longer be required and there will be no limits on public gatherings, but borders will remain closed.New Zealand has reported no new Covid-19 cases for more than two weeks.Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told reporters she did "a little dance" when she was told the country no longer had any active virus cases."While we're in a safer, stronger position there's still no easy path back to pre-Covid life, but the determination and focus we have had on our health response will now be vested in our economic rebuild," she said."While the job is not done, there is no denying this is a milestone. So can I finish with a very simple, 'Thank you, New Zealand'." A sustained effort New Zealand first went into lockdown on 25 March, setting up a new four-stage alert system and going in at level four, where most businesses were shut, schools closed and people told to stay at home.After more than five weeks, it moved to level three in April, allowing takeaway food shops and some non-essential businesses to re-open.As the number of community cases continued to decline, the country moved into level two in mid-May.The move to level one comes ahead of time - the government had originally meant to make the move on 22 June, but it was brought forward after no new cases were reported for 17 days, say local media outlets. Under the new rules, all schools and workplaces will be open. Weddings, funerals and public transport will be able to resume without any restrictions.Social distancing will no longer be required but will be encouraged.However, all New Zealanders arriving from abroad will still have to go through a 14-day period of isolation or quarantine.Ms Ardern warned that the country would "certainly see cases again", adding that "elimination is not a point in time, it is a sustained effort".New Zealand has seen 1,154 confirmed cases and 22 deaths from Covid-19 since the virus arrived in late February, but has been widely praised for its handling of the crisis.For many, the latest announcement is a cause for celebration - but not without caution.Auckland-based lorry driver Patrick Weston told the BBC: "Everyone is so happy we're finally through this, but we're still nervous."I think the main thing people are worried about is the economy - so many people out of work, so many people looking for work at the same time."[On Tuesday] all restrictions are lifted and we can carry on as normal. Sporting events, music events can all take place with no restriction of numbers. We're still being encouraged to social distance of course, so we hope people will be sensible."We're happy, but nervous about the future."

The UK is likely to be among the European countries worst affected by corona virus, one of the government's senior scientific advisers has said. The warning, from Sir Jeremy Farrar, comes as UK deaths from the virus are expected to pass 10,000 on Sunday.In response, Business Secretary Alok Sharma said countries were on "different trajectories".On Saturday, the UK recorded 917 new coronavirus deaths, taking the total number of hospital deaths to 9,875.The figure does not include deaths outside of hospitals, such as in care homes or in the community.Ministers are continuing to urge people to stay at home over the Easter weekend to curb the spread of the virus, despite warm and sunny weather across parts of the UK.Earlier the prime minister said he owed his life to the NHS staff treating him for coronavirus.Boris Johnson remains in hospital, where he continues to recover after spending three nights in intensive care.Wellcome Trust director Sir Jeremy Farrar told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show the UK was likely to be "one of the worst, if not the worst affected country in Europe".Currently Italy has the highest number of deaths of any European country - with more than 19,000 deaths - followed by Spain, France and the UK, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.Germany has kept deaths below 3,000 so far.Sir Jeremy, a member of the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show the "remarkable" scale of testing in Germany had been key to keeping the number of hospital admissions for coronavirus lower than in the UK.Sir Jeremy said testing allowed countries to isolate people with Covid-19, preventing them from transmitting the virus to others, as well as buying time for hospitals to prepare."Undoubtedly there are lessons to learn from that," he added.The UK government has said it wants to do 100,000 coronavirus tests a day by the end of April but has faced criticism for not increasing the number more quickly.Sir Jeremy said a second or third wave of the virus "was probably inevitable" and treatment and a vaccine was "our only true exit strategy".He said a vaccine could be available by autumn but it would take longer to ramp up manufacturing to the scale required to vaccinate many millions of people."I would hope we would get [that] done in 12 months but that is in itself an unprecedented ambition," he said. Asked whether he agreed with Sir Jeremy's analysis of the UK's death rate, Business Secretary Alok Sharma said: "Different countries are at different stages of this cycle.""What we have done with the advice that we have now set out to people, to stay at home, is precisely because we want to make sure that we have a flattening of the curve, that infection rates aren't going up, and ultimately people's lives are being saved," he told the programme."We are starting to see these measures work," he added, but said it was too early for them to be lifted yet.Prof Keith Neal, emeritus professor in the epidemiology of infectious diseases at the University of Nottingham, said it was likely the UK would have one of the largest numbers of coronavirus deaths because it had the second largest po[CENSORED]tion in western Europe after Germany."The important figure is the death rate per million and the total number of deaths. On this count Belgium seems to be heading for a serious problem like Italy and Spain," he said.There have been so many grim milestones in this coronavirus outbreak but passing a death toll of 10,000 may prove one of the most shocking.There are positive signs that the rate of infection is slowing, driven down by social distancing.But the numbers dying every day may increase still further because some people who caught the virus three or four weeks ago may not survive intensive care now.The scientists advising the government have long warned of this lag between measures to keep the public at home and a reduction in the daily death toll.The expectation is that on current trends there will be a peak, perhaps in a week or two, though no-one can predict how long it'll take after that for the losses to fall to low levels.It all depends on the public's response and so far officials say it's been overwhelmingly supportive.Meanwhile, in his first public statement since being moved out of intensive care on Thursday, Mr Johnson paid tribute to the medics treating him, saying: "I can't thank them enough. I owe them my life."BBC political correspondent Ben Wright said No 10 did not want to speculate about when the PM might leave hospital or be back at his desk, but a return to work "does not look imminent".He said the prime minister was expected to rest and recover in the coming weeks, with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab continuing to deputise - and to be in charge when ministers carry out a review of the lockdown measures.A message posted from the prime minister's Twitter account wished the country a happy Easter, as worshippers marked the festival from home."This year across the country churches will remain closed and families will spend the day apart," the message said."But by staying home, remember, you are protecting the NHS and saving lives".

Ultima Online (UO) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released on September 24, 1997 by Origin Systems. Ultima Online is a fantasy role-playing game set in the Ultima universe. It is known for its extensive player versus player combat system. Since its release, it has added eight expansion packs, a booster pack and dozens of free content updates. The release of Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn in 2007 brought a new game engine with upgraded visuals. Ultima Online continued the tradition of previous Ultima games in many ways, but due to advancing technology and the simple fact that it was Origin's first persistent online game, many new game mechanics appeared. Partially designed as a social and economic experiment, the game had to account for widespread player interaction as well as deal with the tradition of players feeling as if they were the center of attention, as had been the case in single-player games. Ultima Online began with a single world, with specific expansion packs adding additional territory and new worlds. The second world was the "Lost Lands", with additional land, dungeons, creatures, and terrain. The third was Trammel. This led the developers to distinguish the original world by making the environment more grim, and naming it "Felucca".The two kinds of servers were "normal" servers with both Trammel (consensual PVP) and Felucca (non-consensual PVP) ruleset and "siege" servers with non-consensual PVP and no item insurance.Siege servers support one character slot on an account, limits to ways of traveling and other limits. The worlds in Ultima Online include: Felucca — The original world, which evolved to include dead trees and tombstones to distinguish. It has a harsher rule set where player killing is more common. Trammel — Supported a rule set that does not allow non-consensual PVP and additional open land for player housing. Ilshenar — Added dungeons and monsters and evolved to include new land, as well as more than 30 new creatures (designed by Todd McFarlane). Malas — Included a Player versus Player arena and space for 1500 new homes. It featured Dungeon Doom, the then-largest dungeon, and two cities: Luna (the "City of Paladins") and Umbra (the "City of Necromancers").[Malas is a series of islands floating in a starryvoid and is distinguished by a darker artistic style.Malas was praised for its variety of creatures and geographic features. Tokuno — Group of islands based on Feudal Japan. Ter Mur — Land of the Gargoyles. The capital, Ter Mur, features space for player homes. Valley of Eodon — A primitive, prehistoric style land-mass with dinosaurs and giant apes. Ultima Online is the product of Richard Garriott's idea for a fantasy game involving several thousand people who can all play in a shared fantasy world. Prior games allowed hundreds of people to play at the same time, including Habitat (beta-tested in 1986), The Realm Online, Neverwinter Nights (the AOL version) and Meridian 59; however, Ultima Online significantly outdid these games, both graphically and in game mechanics. Garriott commented that "it was very important to us that Ultima Online be a game with a theme, and story, and quest - and then support larger, grander activity. We don't want it to be just player controlled and dominated; we want it to be an Ultima experience, with all the qualities that people expect from that. Ultima Online will be, I believe, the very first ever completely virtual world for the mass public to go live out alternate lives in." The goal was to offer the player as much freedom as possible.The initial team was composed of Garriott, Starr Long, Rick Delashmit, Scott Phillips and, a bit later, Raph Koster, who became the lead designer. Koster wrote public "designer letters" and usually went by his nickname of Designer Dragon. Koster drew inspiration from prior online games, such as DartMUD. The project started in 1995 and was presented to the public at E3 as "Ultima Online: Shattered Legacy" in May 1996. Origin claimed to have more than 3,000 participants in the preliminary alpha testing.The development cost was much greater than traditional computer games; it relied on people accessing servers via modem. Ultima Online's initial features included persistent player housing, skill-based character progression (without levels or classes),a craft-based and player-driven economy,and unrestricted player-versus-player combat. We thought it was fantastic. We'd spent an enormous amount of time and effort on it. But what happened was all the players went in and just killed everything; so fast that the game couldn't spawn them fast enough to make the simulation even begin. And so, this thing that we'd spent all this time on, literally no-one ever noticed – ever – and we eventually just ripped it out of the game, you know, with some sadness. Lord British was Garriott's in-game alter ego, who was killed during an in-game appearance at Ultima Online's beta test on August 9, 1997. During a server po[CENSORED]tion stress test, a player character known as Rainz cast the "fire field" spell, killing Lord British. Producer Starr Long blamed it on human error: Lord British's character, like others, had been made invulnerable to this kind of attack, but by design the invulnerability did not persist over several game sessions. When the server crashed shortly before the incident, Garriott forgot to reset his invulnerability status. Shortly after, administrators banned Rainz's account from the beta test for repeatedly exploiting, rather than reporting, bugs. According to Origin, he was not banned for the assassination but rather for prior complaints against his account highlighted by this incident. Beta testers protested Rainz's ban as well as subsequent actions of Long and other developers, during which his in-game character used a spell to indiscriminately kill other characters who observed the assassination. MMOCrunch calls it the most memorable event in MMORPG History. September 1997 was the last day of the original beta test.The beta ended with a bang, as players were treated to an "end of the world" scenario with Shadowlords, demons, and other evil creatures slaughtering every character in sight. In September 1997, Ultima Online launched and opened the first game servers to the public.Upon release, Ultima Online proved po[CENSORED]r, reaching 100,000 paying subscribers within six months, causing severe lag problems. In 1999, servers opened around the world to support the rising po[CENSORED]rity of the game, in Japan, Europe and South Korea. In 2000, Garriot resigned from Origin, taking Lord British with him. Game players created their own fanfiction speculations as to why the Lord had vanished. In February 2000, a large in-world event had a massive army of undead lay siege to the Britannia city of Trinsic. The event ran concurrently on all servers over several months. Another server opened in Australia during this time. In May 2000, Ultima Online's second expansion Ultima Online: Renaissance dramatical altered the game. It split the game world into two parts called Trammel and Felucca, one was a consensual PVP zone, while the other was non-consensual. In November 2000, a Ultima Online's first official fanfest was held, called the UO World Faire in Austin, TX.In March 2001, Ultima Online's third expansion Ultima Online: Third Dawn was released. It added a new area to the server called Ilshenar. This new area could only be accessed with a new game client that launched with the expansion. The original game client could be used in the previous server areas. In January 2002, Ultima Online's second official fanfest was called Online Worlds FanFest, also held in Austin. Players were able to meet the developers, as well as guest speaker Todd McFarlane. February saw the release of Ultima Online's fourth expansion Ultima Online: Lord Blackthorn's Revenge. Notably, it enabled access to the areas previously only available to the newer Third Dawn game client. In February 2003, Ultima Online's fifth expansion Ultima Online: Age of Shadows was released. It was the most game changing update yet including: offering players the ability to custom design their game homes, a server area that doubled the size of homes, and overhauled the item system. Around March 2003 Ultima Online reached approximately 250,000 subscribers. In February 2004, Origin Systems shut down. Ultima Online no longer had a named studio managing it. Development headquarters moved from Austin to Fairfax, Virginia. The sixth expansion, Samurai Empire, launched in November 2004 was Japanese-themed. It offered two new professions, the Ninja and the Samurai, as well as new Japanese-themed housing tile sets. New lands, the Tokuno Islands, were added, with the cities being styled after ancient Japanese cities. Ultima Online was the first MMORPG to reach the 100,000 subscriber base, far exceeding that of any game that went before it.Subscriber numbers peaked at around 250,000 in July 2003, but then began a steady decline. In 2008 the game had around 100,000 subscribers.As of April 2008, Ultima Online held a market share below 0.6% of the massively multiplayer online game subscriptions. This may in part be attributed to the 2004 release of World of Warcraft, which quickly established hegemony over the MMORPG market and has attracted scores of players from all preexisting games in the genre. Expansion number seven, Mondain's Legacy, launched in August 2005. It featured the second player race, Elves. The quest system received a major upgrade, as did the crafting system. Spellweaving was added to the skills. Many new dungeons were added. This expansion was the first that was only available online (offline versions on CDs could be ordered). Mondain's Legacy was the last expansion, with updates becoming more irregular after that point. In June 2006 Electronic Arts purchased Mythic Entertainment, the creators of Dark Age of Camelot. Mythic was tasked with managing EA's MMORPG portfolio, including Ultima Online. That month it was also announced that the anti-cheating software PunkBuster would be integrated into Ultima Online. This marked the first time PunkBuster would be used with an MMORPG to help curb cheating and exploiting. However, it was never integrated into the game, and in November 2006, Electronic Arts put the PunkBuster integration on indefinite hold. In August 2007 Ultima Online: Kingdom Reborn was released. This was the first major overhaul of the client and artwork systems since Ultima Online: Third Dawn. The final expansion was Stygian Abyss (2009), which focused on the gargoyle race. After Stygian Abyss the development model shifted from expansions to "booster packs" that were intended to be smaller updates released more frequently. However, the first booster pack High Seas of 2010 was also the last. It was announced on February 6, 2014 that development of the game would be transferred from Mythic to Broadsword, a new studio, that would take over future development. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Operating System: or. CPU: Intel® Pentium™ III 1000 MHz or AMD® Athlon™ 1000 MHz. RAM: 512 MB or more. Video: 64 MB 3D graphics card with Hardware Transform and Lighting, such as NVIDIA® GeForce™ 3 class card or newer, ATI® Radeon™ 9700 or newer. Exceptions.

Images have emerged of coffins being buried in a mass grave in New York City, as the death toll from the coronavirus continues to rise. Workers in hazmat outfits were seen stacking wooden coffins in deep trenches in Hart Island.Officials say burials are being ramped up at site, which has long been used for people with no next-of-kin or families who cannot afford a funeral.New York state now has more coronavirus cases than any single country.The state's confirmed caseload of Covid-19 is almost 162,000, of whom 7,067 have died, according to Johns Hopkins University.Spain has recorded about 157,000 cases and Italy 143,600, while China, where the virus emerged last year, has declared 82,000 cases.The US as a whole has recorded 466,000 cases and nearly 16,700 deaths. Globally there are 1.6 million cases and 97,000 deaths. The drone footage comes from Hart Island, off the Bronx in Long Island Sound, which has been used for more than 150 years by city officials as a mass burial site for those with no next-of-kin, or families who cannot afford funerals.Normally, about 25 bodies a week are interred on the island, according to the Associated Press news agency.But burial operations have increased from one day a week to five days a week, with around 24 burials each day, said Department of Correction spokesman Jason Kersten.Prisoners from Rikers Island, the city's main jail complex, usually do the job, but the rising workload has recently been taken over by contractors.It is not clear how many of the dead have no next-of-kin or could not afford a funeral. However, the city has cut the amount of time it will hold unclaimed remains amid pressure on morgue space.New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio indicated earlier this week that "temporary burials" might be necessary until the crisis had passed. "Obviously the place we have used historically is Hart Island," he said.The daily tally of coronavirus deaths announced in New York state on Thursday was 799, a record high for a third day.But Governor Andrew Cuomo took heart from the fact that the number of Covid-19 patients admitted to New York hospitals had dropped for a second day to 200.He said it was a sign social distancing was working. He called the outbreak a "silent explosion that ripples through society with the same randomness, the same evil that we saw on 9/11".Another glimmer of hope was heralded on Thursday as official projections for the nationwide death toll were lowered.Dr Anthony Fauci, a key member of the White House's coronavirus task force, told NBC News' Today show on Thursday the final number of Americans who would die from Covid-19 in the outbreak "looks more like 60,000".In late March, Dr Fauci estimated "between 100,000 and 200,000" could die.The 60,000 projection would match the upper estimate for total flu deaths in the US between October 2019 to March 2020, according to government data.But Vice-President Mike Pence stressed on Thursday that Covid-19 was about three times as contagious as influenza.The White House has previously touted estimates that 2.2 million Americans could die from coronavirus if nothing was done to stop its spread.Stay-at-home orders have in the meantime closed non-essential businesses in 42 states, while drastically slowing the US economy.New data on Thursday showed unemployment claims had topped 6 million for the second week in a row, bringing the number of Americans out of work over the last three weeks to 16.8 million.Chicago, meanwhile, imposed a curfew on alcohol sales from 21:00 local time on Thursday to stop the persistent violation of a ban on large gatherings.The measure, due to remain in place until 30 April, comes after health officials this week said black Chicagoans account for half of all the Illinois city's coronavirus cases and more than 70% of its deaths, despite making up just 30% of the po[CENSORED]tion.Figures from Louisiana, Mississippi, Michigan, Wisconsin and New York reflect the same racial disparity in coronavirus infections.Presumptive Democratic White House nominee Joe Biden joined growing calls on Thursday for the release of comprehensive racial data on the pandemic.He said it had cast a spotlight on inequity and the impact of "structural racism".

As nations shut borders, a surge of people pouring unmonitored over international boundaries in a volatile and vulnerable part of the world has sparked warnings about the unchecked spread of the virus there. In March, more than 150,000 Afghans spontaneously returned from Iran, one of the countries worst hit by the coronavirus - thousands more arrive daily.Tens of thousands have also recently returned from Pakistan - among the worst affected countries in South Asia.Officials are struggling to control this unprecedented movement across what have always been porous and often lawless borders.So far, Afghanistan is not among countries severely hit by the virus, reporting 423 cases and 14 deaths, but this influx has raised fears of much higher transmission rates."With the numbers of likely infected people who have crossed the border, I expect the numbers of cases and deaths [in Afghanistan] to go up significantly," says Natasha Howard, associate professor of global health and conflict at the National University of Singapore. If there is an explosion of cases, like we've seen in the US, Spain and Italy, war-ravaged and impoverished Afghanistan's health system would be completely overwhelmed. Iran crossing: Overwhelmed by numbers: Abdul Maez Mohammadi and his family were in Iran for eight years. But after the boss at the construction company where he worked stopped paying his salary, he gathered his wife, brother and one-year-old son and headed home.This week they crossed from the Islam Qala border into Herat as undocumented migrants and will head back to their Taliban-controlled village where there are no health facilities."The situation in Iran of Covid-19 is very dangerous and I heard there is nowhere to admit cases," says Mr Mohammadi.At this border crossing there is no quarantine centre on either side. The provincial authorities are conducting basic health checks, but they are overwhelmed by the number of people.Herat has a shortage of Covid-19 testing kits and results take four or five days for those who do get tested - and by then it is likely they would have already left for their villages.Mr Mohammadi says he will have to earn money as soon as he is back in his village, but he knows they will have to take precautions."We have to do hand-washing when we wake up from sleep, brush teeth three times a day, avoid mass gatherings, not travel to neighbouring areas and food should be well cooked," he says.The International Organization for Migration (IOM), part of the UN, has set up centres to provide humanitarian assistance for the most vulnerable of those crossing back into Afghanistan.Aziz Ahmad Rahimi, senior regional director for IOM in Herat province, says when they see anyone showing Covid-19 symptoms they transfer them to the local hospitals. Ten to 15 people so far have tested positive he says. Pakistan crossing: Forced to abandon controls: A similar situation is playing out on the border with Pakistan.The Afghan government requested Pakistani authorities to open border crossings to allow Afghans who had become stranded after Pakistan shut its borders to return home.Authorities said they would allow 1,000 people a day but 20,000 are reported to have crossed at the Chaman border in the last two days prompting authorities to abandon the sti[CENSORED]tion that only those with valid documents be allowed to cross.Afghan authorities had made arrangements to quarantine 4,000 Afghans for 14 days at Torkham but were quickly overwhelmed by the numbers, reports say.In total 60,000 crossed into Afghanistan in three days, according to IOM.An unverified video that has been widely shared by media outlets shows people rushing across the border without showing any documentation.And these are the people going through official checkpoints. For many years there has been illegal cross-border movement between Afghanistan and Pakistan - those numbers are much harder to track.All of this has led aid agencies and NGOs working in the region to give a dire warning about the spread of coronavirus across these borders.And if, as they fear, cases erupt in the next few weeks, how Afghanistan might deal with the numbers given developed countries with top-class health systems are struggling, is leading to some daunting estimates. How can Afghanistan cope? The Afghan ministry of public health forecasts that 16 million out of a po[CENSORED]tion of more than 30 million could get the coronavirus, citing the World Health Organization (WHO).Waheedullah Mayar, spokesperson for ministry of public health, says in the worst case scenario 700,000 people will require hospitalisation, 220,000 of them may require ICU treatment. From that number 110,000 people may die due to Covid-19.Afghanistan has 10,400 hospital beds in the entire country. In Herat province, some estimates put the number of ventilators at as little as 12."Afghanistan will not have such a number of beds even in 10 years," he says, adding that health authorities are focused on preventative measures.Kabul is now under completely lockdown and public gatherings have been banned in Herat.But this is a po[CENSORED]tion where many have pre-existing conditions like tuberculosis, cancer, diabetes and there are approximately 2.5 million malnourished children, according to charity Save the Children.

Velvet Assassin is a stealth video game for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360, released in 2009. Velvet Assassin's working title was Sabotage.It was released on the Mac app store in 2013. Players take control of Violette Summer, a World War II-era British Secret Intelligence Service spy operating deep behind enemy lines, attempting to help thwart the Nazi war effort.The game's story was inspired by a real-life secret agent/saboteur Violette Szabo. Born in Dorset, Violette Summer (voiced by Melinda Y. Cohen) grew up in a happy family and had a great and active childhood. Initially, she started her working life in a beauty salon before the outbreak of war inspired her to move to London and join the weapon industry. It did not take too long for her to be noticed by the secret services, as she was beautiful, athletic and had great attention to detail, and so she was soon recruited into Secret Intelligence Service during Britain's darkest hours. Violette had lost an aunt during one of the first Luftwaffe bombing attacks and to further compound her heartache she later lost her Royal Air Force husband in battle. However, Summer was strong willed and used these painful experiences to inspire her to succeed as a spy for the SIS. Summer managed to carry out several missions successfully before being gravely wounded by a sniper on a mission to kill Kamm, a Nazi military intelligence officer. Comatose in a hospital in France, Violette relives key moments in a series of flashbacks. Hence, the bulk of gameplay will take place during these flashbacks. The missions include blowing up a fuel depot on the Maginot Line, assassination of a colonel in a cathedral in Paris, stealing documents and marking a sub pen for bombers in Hamburg during Operation Gomorrah, and finding three secret agents in Warsaw. Moving through the city's sewer system, she finds one agent seriously wounded (and silences him) and another dead by cyanide poisoning, and a mission that involved moving through the Warsaw Ghetto, where the residents were either rounded up or executed, Violette makes her way through to the Gestapo's Pawiak prison to give cyanide to the third agent. Through her memories, scenes from the hospital can be seen with two men arguing whether to keep Violette alive, give her up to the Schutzstaffel, or kill her to save her the torture if captured by the Nazis. Her location betrayed, Violette wakes from her coma to find the enemy troops entering the hospital. Escaping them, Violette finds the villagers being murdered or rounded up by a force from the Dirlewanger Brigade, a brutal SS unit of convicts, and taken to the church. Locking the villagers in, the soldiers set fire to the church. Violette is unsuccessful at trying to free the villagers, and due to emotional and physical exhaustion, collapses. The enemy leader is shown to be Kamm, whose face was burned by Violette's assassination attempt. In the end credits, Violette is shown in her hospital gown standing on a cliff overlooking a German plane. When the game begins, Violette is seen from above, lying in a hospital bed. There are morphine syringes scattered across her bed, and the influx of drugs in her system creates a series of dreams that let her recount her past missions.Players have to hide in the shadows in order to avoid being detected. As a stealth-based game, lighting plays an important role. The HUD provides players with a silhouette of Violette which can be in one of three states. Purple means she is hidden in the shadows and invisible to enemies. White means she is exposed in light, but not yet detected. Red means she has been spotted and enemies are seeking out her position. If she is detected, she will either have to fight off the guard or escape. The game employs a special lifeline if detected called "Morphine Mode". When triggered, Violette is shown in her hospital gown with blood drops appearing all over the screen. For a limited amount of time, Violette can execute any alerted guards or escape. Players have limited use of the morphine lifeline. The game also occasionally makes use of "Blend Stealth". If Violette acquires a female SS uniform, she can change her attire at predefined points in the game. When Violette wears the SS uniform, guards will not identify her as a threat unless she moves too close to them, or she performs a suspicious action, such as aiming a gun. Violette's ability as an agent can be upgraded by finding a range of collectibles scattered throughout her environment. Once the player reaches 1,000 experience points, her skills can be upgraded in one of three ways: either Improved Stealth (sneaking), Morphine or Strength. The player can upgrade her skills based on individual gameplay style. SYSTEM REQUIREMNENTS CPU: Info. CPU SPEED: 3 GHz. RAM: 512 MB. OS: Windows XP. VIDEO CARD: Pixel Shader 3 Graphics Card with 256 MB VRAM (NVIDIA Geforce 6800 or ATI Radeon X1600) FREE DISK SPACE: 5 GB.

Freekstyle is a 2002 motocross racing video game for the PlayStation 2, GameCube and Game Boy Advance. There are four levels of gameplay: the circuit, a quick race, freestyle, and free run. Race courses Monumental Motoplex in Monument Valley, Utah — This is a course that twists and turns though the rock structures. The jumps are very smooth and one of the last jumps has burst though a ring with a glass panel in it with the Freekstyle logo on it. The Crust Belt — This track is based in an abandoned coal mining/welding factory, oddly still running, features jumping over belts full of coal, and speeding through a run down warehouse. There are also two secret jumps, one where the player jumps over buckets filled with molten steel, and the other in which they have to smash through wooden crates to get on the route to a massive jump. Burn It Up — The player must race their way in this "Nature Gone Ari" track, full of burning/collapsing trees and rocks shooting down an uphill section of the track. The very first jump is the biggest in the course. There are two secret jumps, one in which the player goes off course and follows a gray line that leads them to a rock jump. The other needs full boost to get up on the top of the multiple 'S' shaped turns below. Gnome Sweet Gnome — This course takes place at Green Animals Topiary Garden in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, featuring jumps over multiple sculptures, and a section where the player knocks over little gnomes. Let It Ride — This track is based in Laughlin, Nevada, it is one of the more colorful and ambient tracks in the game. There is a secret route where, when a jump pops up from the ground, the player will land on a red and blue platform which takes them to the next pop up jump (non-secret). The Rocket Garden — The hardest track in the game is in a rocket launching base, and has more secret jumps than any of the other tracks. First, if the player hears an alarm go off in the first section of the track, they must go to the middle launching pad; there will be a jump and they will soar past a rocket taking off. Next, on the very next jump, if they jump the middle ramp, they will land on a platform which leads them to the inside of the facility. The exit of the building launches them out to the next jump section. On the final stretch, the player must go to the middle route, and it will lead them to a big jump with a glass pane ring. Freestyle courses Feel the Pane in Detroit — This is a course filled with jumbo-trons or "Freek TV's", and loads of glass panes to smash or crash though. The Crash Pad — This is an abandoned house under construction, full of jumps over the house, exploding grills, and a pool. It is not for swimming, though. The Burbs — This is a neighborhood turned into "Freekville" The po[CENSORED]tion was originally in the thousands, after Freekstyle paid a visit, there were only eight (Number of racers in the game). This course is full of twisty, curvy, massive, and "Over-the-Top" jumps. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS OS: Windows XP SP2, Vista, 7, 8. Processor: Intel Core®2 Duo or AMD Athlon 64. Memory: 4 GB RAM. Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 550 or AMD Radeon HD 5750 with 1024 MB video memory. Storage: 1 GB available space.

ABBA: You Can Dance is a dance video game for the Wii, developed by the French gaming company Ubisoft. It was released on November 15, 2011 in North America,November 24, 2011 in Australia and November 25, 2011 in Europe. The game is a spin-off of the Just Dance series, and features 25 songs by the Swedish pop group ABBA and includes a "Karaoke Mode" which allows 2 players to sing via USB microphones. Abba are a fantastic candidate for a dancing game, and not only because their generation-vaulting po[CENSORED]rity makes them an easy win for parties. As a proper pop band, the dancing is built in from the start. There's nothing clumsy or contrived about attaching a group routine to Knowing Me, Knowing You or Hole In Your Soul – these songs are made for movement. The choreography across the 27 tracks (well, 25 plus "Dancefloor" and "Prom" versions of Dancing Queen) is well-suited to the music. Stupid booty grinding is avoided in favour of pleasingly Abba-ish arm movements and turns (and yes, it is difficult to follow the on-screen prompts while you spin away from the telly, but dear God it is pretty much impossible to get Brits to crunk without making them too sauced to hold the Wiimote first). You will need friends, though. Playing alone is possible, but given that the routines are all for four dancers and involve various amounts of hand-holding and side-stepping around each other, you'll feel pretty lonely pretty fast if you can't round up a trio of friends. Once you've drawn them in with the promise of kirsch, meatballs and perky songs about divorce, you can keep them there by exploring some of the extras on the disc. There's a score-free karaoke mode featuring original videos, which is no challenger to the mighty SingStar Abba and does require you to handle a hateful, plasticky, third-party mic, but is nice to have. There's also a World of Abba slideshow factsheet, which is strictly for people who can't access books or Wikipedia to fulfil their need for banalities about Anni-Frid, Björn, Benny and Agnetha. Better is the mini-musical mode. This is a nod to the Mamma Mia! juggernaut without the hassle of licensing, which builds four songs into a Grease-alike story for three girls and one guy (a smart move, given that the dancing games market isn't as gender-balanced as Abba themselves). It won't keep you going for long, though, and it's a reminder of just how limited dancing games on Wii are. But for a relatively tiny price, you get to pretend that you're a part of the greatest pop group ever, and it's a pretty convincing show.

Shaun White Snowboarding is a sports video game for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Wii, Nintendo DS, Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Xbox 360 systems. It was developed by Ubisoft Montreal, published by Ubisoft, and released in 2008. The Wii edition of the game, Shaun White Snowboarding: Road Trip, was developed from the ground up for the system, taking full advantage of the Wii Balance Board accessory and featuring its own unique storyline and adventure with Shaun White. There are six mountains in Shaun White Snowboarding, including Alaska, Park City, Europe, and Japan. Each mountain features up to three different sections: peak, back country, and park (or resort). There is also a "Target Limited Edition" of the game that is exclusive to Target; this version gives the player access to Target Mountain, a mountain with Target branding all over it. It has been described in-game as extremely difficult to find, and contains additional jibs, character models, and a sponsored version of the standard game's best snowboard which can be unlocked before the player's final challenge against Shaun White. The last mountain, called B.C., is only available in the "Mile-High Pack" paid downloadable content. It is set in British Columbia. Shaun White can be controlled with just a remote or a combination of remote and Wii Fit balance board, and both work well. The board tends to be a little less precise, and for some of the game's harder challenges you may have to step off and take the mountain with just the remote. But for most of the events either input method will suffice. Switching between the two schemes is a breeze and can be done at any time during a game. If you're just rocking a remote, tilting it side to side will handle your steering. It's surprisingly responsive and works better than most Wii racers that use tilt controls. Pressing A will cause your boarder to tuck in and increase speed, although you'll lose some maneuverability. Holding the B button will allow you to carve left and right but your momentum will take a nose dive. Giving the remote a quick flick will cause you to jump. While airborne tilting will get you to spin and the B button will perform grabs. You can also flick the remote in different directions during a jump to perform one-off tricks. Throw the balance board into the mix and your steering and jumps can be controlled with your feet while the remote will still handle carves and grabs. You stand on the board sideways, just as you would on a real live snowboard. Turning is done just by leaning forward or back with your rear foot. A small bounce will make your avatar jump. Tricks are accomplished by placing weight on different combinations of the balls and heels of your feet as well as pressing the A and B buttons. Three levels of sensitivity are available when the game calibrates the board. For the most part riding this way feels really good, but as I mentioned it's just a little less accurate. Turning and spinning are a bit easier with the remote, but getting up on the board is a lot of fun. It's really a toss up as to which control scheme is superior and if you have a balance board you'll probably enjoy using both methods. This is a casual, literally pick-up-and-play game. Not only are the controls easy to master, grinding has been simplified so that if you're anywhere near a rail when you jump your board will lock to it. If you approach the beginning of a rail head-on you don't even have to jump -- the game will automatically put you up there. These aren't complaints. Ubisoft has crafted a game that is easy to get into and feels really good to play. Each event has two goals: an easier "dare" goal and a more challenging "respect" goal. Casual players can proceed briskly through the game just by achieving dare goals, but the respect challenges are also fun and extend the experience. Like most snow- and skateboarding games you'll have to chain tricks together in order to rack up higher scores. It's not as deep as other action sports games, but it is definitely fun. The premise here is to give players the sense of camaraderie that comes with travelling and snowboarding with your friends. You start out with three people in your group and as you progress more will join along the way. Each rider is proficient in different areas like speed, jumping, and landing. For any challenge in the game players can choose a rider and a cameraman to follow (your cameraman also provides a stat boost). We're encouraged to use a variety of riders because the challenges are always changing from tests of speed to skill-based trick contests. The idea is you're travelling around the world trying to catch up with Shaun White Real-world camaraderie is also available as the entire game can be played cooperatively with a friend. Unfortunately, this isn't a drop-in/drop-out feature, so you can't continue a co-op game on your own or bring in some help if you're having trouble in single-player. Competitive modes for up to four players are also available in both simultaneous split screen and hotseat games where everyone takes turns. Of course, only one balance board can be used at a time. Shaun White has a good licensed soundtrack, including a wide variety of music from bands like Run DMC, Blue Oyster Cult, and Audioslave. Tapping the 1 button during a ride will cycle through the track list. Sound effects also sound great, especially when skidding over ice. The remote's speaker is used to indicate when you've nailed a trick. A kid-friendly, motion-controlled version of Shaun White Snowboarding could have been a disaster, but this turns out to be a truly slick edition of the franchise. Not only is this one of the best-looking Wii games available, both remote and balance board controls feel really nice. I recommend it regardless of whether or not you own the board. This will be another good one to bring out when your non-gamer friends come over, as it fits the "pick up and play" description perfectly. The option to work through the entire game cooperatively is great but it would have been nice if your progression could carry over between single- and multiplayer. Overall this is a polished package and a great example of how to treat the Wii version of a multi-platform game. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Processor: Intel Pentium Dual Core E5300 2.6GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3800+ Graphics: AMD Radeon X1600 or NVIDIA GeForce 6800 XT System Memory: 1 GB RAM Storage: 8 GB Hard drive space DirectX 9 Compatible Graphics Card

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is a hack and slash action role-playing game developed by EA Redwood Shores for the PlayStation 2 and Windows. It was ported to the GameCube and Xbox by Hypnos Entertainment,to the Game Boy Advance by Griptonite Games,to mobile by JAMDAT,and to OS X by Beenox.The game was published by Electronic Arts. It is the sequel to the 2002 game The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. The game is an adaptation of Peter Jackson's 2002 film The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and his 2003 film The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, which was released shortly after the game. As it is not an adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's 1954 novel, The Return of the King, the third volume in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, anything from the novel not specifically mentioned or depicted in the films could not be represented in the game. This is because, at the time, Vivendi Universal Games, in partnership with Tolkien Enterprises, held the rights to the video game adaptations of Tolkien's literary works, whilst Electronic Arts held the rights to the video game adaptations of the New Line Cinema films. The game is similar to its predecessor in basic gameplay, but differs by adding multiple storylines, more playable characters and increased interaction with environments. A two-player co-op mode is also available for some missions. As with The Two Towers, The Return of the King was developed in close collaboration with the filmmakers, using many of the actual reference photos, drawings, models, props and other assets from the film. The game was met with positive critical reception for its graphics, audio, and gameplay, although its camera positioning and short length were criticized. Described by the developers as a modern version of Gauntlet, The Return of the King is a hack and slash action game played from a third-person perspective.The game is very similar to its predecessor in basic gameplay. Each character has a quick attack which does minimal damage and can be easily blocked, and a fierce attack, which does more damage, but is slower and leaves the player vulnerable to attack. Only fierce attacks can break enemy shields. Each character also has a ranged attack, a "killing move" (which can be used to instantly kill downed enemies), a parry (which can deflect enemy attacks), a knock back (which pushes nearby enemies away), a jump back (in which the player character jumps back away from the enemy), a devastating attack (a charged fierce attack) and a special ability.Playable characters in the console and PC versions are Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Frodo and Sam, with Faramir, Pippin and Merry available as unlockable characters. Playable characters in the GBA version are Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Frodo, Gandalf, and Éowyn, with Gollum and Sam available as unlockable characters. Each playable character has their own set of combos and attributes. After the end of each level the player can upgrade their characters' abilities and combos using experience points. The number of points available to the player depends on the efficiency of their kills.During each level, the player will be continually graded on the skill with which they dispatch enemies; "Fair", "Good", "Excellent" and "Perfect." The more skill with which the player kills, the more experience they acquire. The player's skill is measured by an on-screen meter which increases as the player dispatches enemies. To avoid the meter dropping back down, the player must avoid being hit, and kill enemies using a variety of different methods. When a player reaches a Perfect level, all of their attacks increase in strength, and the experience from each kill is doubled. However, Perfect status only lasts for a brief period of time.A new aspect of Return of the King is that at the end of each level, rather than purchasing upgrades for the individual character, the player can also purchase "Fellowship" upgrades which apply to every playable character. However, characters will only be able to avail of a particular skill when they have reached the corresponding experience level. A major change from The Two Towers is the interactive nature of the game environments. The player can operate machinery, for example bridges and catapults, to complete objectives, and use environmental objects as weapons, such as spears and cauldrons, to kill enemies.The levels are also twice the size of the largest level from The Two Towers and many are less linear.Unlike The Two Towers, The Return of the King features a co-op mode, allowing two players to play through the game together.The North American PlayStation 2 version also has an online multiplayer mode, with USB headset support,although this was removed from the European version of the game. The Game Boy Advance version is played from an isometric three-quarter top-down view. A major gameplay difference in this version is the addition of "runes" which players can etch into their weapons, granting them special abilities. The game also features co-op multiplayer through the Game Boy link function, and unlockable content when connected to the GameCube version via the GameCube – Game Boy Advance link cable. Todd Arnold, senior producer of The Return of the King, stated that the game was not intended to re-tell the story of the film, but to allow the player to come as close as possible to experiencing the critical parts of the film for themselves. Levels were designed with this goal in mind, with just enough plot to give context to the player's actions. Liberties were thus taken with the plot and critics noted there was little footage which could spoil the film for those who had not seen it.. GameSpot's Greg Kasavin said "if you didn't know anything about the story of The Return of the King, then the story of the game may be hard to follow, though you'll still get the gist of it." However, he also advised, "in case you don't want any aspect of the movie spoiled for you, it'd be wise to hold off on playing The Return of the King until after you've seen the movie." The game begins during the Battle of the Hornburg at Helm's Deep, with the Uruk-hai having just penetrated the outer walls. With the defenders falling back to the inner court, Gandalf (voiced by Ian McKellen) appears on a hill-top flanked by thousands of Rohirrim. The player takes control of Gandalf as he enters the battle and helps defeat the Uruk-hai and orc army. After this level, the game splits into three separate mission arcs, each with its own individual set of characters. The "Path of the Wizard" follows Gandalf, the "Path of the King" follows Aragorn (Chris Edgerly), Legolas (Andrew Chaikin) and Gimli (John Rhys-Davies), and the "Path of the Hobbits" follows Frodo (Elijah Wood) and Sam (Sean Astin), although initially only Sam is playable. The Path of the Wizard continues immediately after the events of the first level. The remains of the Uruk-hai and orc army flee into Fangorn Forest. However, within the forest, the Ents, led by Treebeard, have awoken and joined the fight against Sauron. Gandalf helps the ents as they destroy the rest of the army, and then assists them in bringing down a dam holding back the River Isen. This floods Isengard, trapping Saruman (Christopher Lee), who had joined forces with Sauron, in his tower, Orthanc. Gandalf and Pippin (Billy Boyd) then head to Minas Tirith, capital of Gondor, leaving Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and the Rohirrim to follow them. Gandalf has gone ahead of the others because Sauron mistakenly believes that Pippin has the Ring, and Gandalf plans to use this confusion to distract Sauron as Frodo and Sam are led by Gollum (Andy Serkis) towards Mount Doom to destroy the Ring. In Minas Tirth, Gandalf helps repulse the enemies from the walls for a time, but eventually, they break through the city's defenses. Gandalf and the soldiers of Minas Tirith then retreat to a courtyard, where they must defend the fleeing civilians from the enemy. Once the people are safely inside, Gandalf can do little but await the arrival of Aragorn. The Path of the King picks up with Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli and the Rohirrim on the way to Minas Tirith. Before arriving, however, the three companions must walk the Paths of the Dead in an effort to convince the Army of the Dead to join their cause in the War of the Ring. To do so, they must defeat the King of the Dead (Jarion Monroe) in combat. After this, the Paths of the Dead start to collapse, and they must escape before the falling rubble crushes them. With the Army of the Dead pledged to aid them, they travel to Minas Tirith and enter the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. Joining the Rohirrim and the soldiers of Minas Tirith, they face orcs, Easterlings, Haradrim and oliphaunts. They must also defend Merry (Dominic Monaghan) and Éowyn (Lorri Holt), allowing Éowyn the opportunity to defeat the Witch-king of Angmar. As it seems they are about to be overwhelmed, the Army of Dead arrive, destroying the forces of Mordor and saving Minas Tirith. The Path of the Wizard and Path of the King share the same final level, set at the Black Gate of Mordor. In a further effort to distract Sauron from the approach of Frodo and Sam, Gandalf advises that Aragorn and the remaining army marches to the Gates of Mordor as a direct challenge to Sauron, who will send out a vast army to meet them, thus keeping his attention away from Mount Doom. Upon arriving at the Gate, the party are confronted by the Mouth of Sauron (Roger L. Jackson), who tells them that Frodo is dead. They kill him and must then face a massive army of orcs, before fighting the remaining Nazgûl. Not believing Frodo to be dead, they plan to fight as long as they can, ultimately sacrificing themselves so as to give Frodo enough time to destroy the Ring. In The Path of the Hobbits, Frodo, Sam and Gollum must first escape from Osgiliath, fighting past orcs to get to the sewers and ensuring that Frodo is not kidnapped by the Nazgûl. However, upon escaping, Gollum decides to betray them and take the Ring back for himself. He tricks Frodo into going on without Sam, but Sam follows them into Shelob's lair. In the lair, Gollum abandons Frodo, and Sam must fight past giant spiders and orcs, eventually facing Shelob herself, who has attacked Frodo. Sam defeats Shelob, but upon reaching Frodo, he mistakenly believes him to be dead. About to go to Mount Doom on his own, he hides as a group of orcs arrive, and hears them say that Frodo is alive, but unconscious. They take him with them as Sam follows them to the Tower of Cirith Ungol. As Sam is about to enter the Tower, the orcs begin fighting among themselves, and Sam uses the distraction to rescue Frodo. Together, they head to Mount Doom. However, before Frodo can throw the Ring into the lava below, he is attacked by Gollum, who takes the Ring. In the final level, the player controls Frodo as he fights Gollum on the edge of the precipice. Frodo successfully defeats Gollum, knocking him into the lava and destroying the Ring forever. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Processor: Intel Pentium III / AMD Athlon MP Graphics: AMD Radeon X1270 or NVIDIA GeForce 7100 System Memory: 128 MB RAM Storage: 2 GB Hard drive space DirectX 8 Compatible Graphics Card

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade-style combat flight simulator developed by Ubisoft Bucharest and published by Ubisoft. The game is the sequel to Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X, released in 2009. The game was released for Xbox 360 on September 3, 2010 release date, the PlayStation 3 version one week later on September 10. The Microsoft Windows and Wii versions of the game were released on November 12. The game features a story campaign which can be played solo or with cooperation of three other players. The player is often in control of Major Alex Hunter, a pilot from High Altitude Warfare – Experimental (HAWX) squadron but gets to play one or two missions as other pilots, including Captain Dimitri Ivanovich Sokov of Russian Air Force, Lieutenant Colin Munro of the British Royal Navy and Colonel David Crenshaw of HAWX squadron. In most missions, the player pilots a combat aircraft, but occasionally, the player gets to remotely control an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Also in one mission, the player assumes the role of a guns operator in an AC-130 Spooky. The gameplay experience has significantly changed from that of the previous game. Unlike the previous game, the player is no longer given an option of a plane or weapon load-out for the story missions. In addition, the player assumes the role of a wingman while flying as part of a flight, as opposed to a flight leader; therefore, it is no longer possible to issue orders to other wingmen. The game adds takeoff, landing and occasional aerial refueling. Landing allows the player to rearm. The game has changed focus from fire-and-forget missiles towards operator-guided or unguided ordnance. New weapons include stand-off missiles, precision missiles and precision bombs,[5] all of which are forms of operator-guided weapons with slight differences. Joint Strike Missiles,[6] anti-air and ground missiles which were available in all planes and configurations of the previous game, are no longer available in the story campaign and have their damage and range reduced in other modes. Multi-target anti-ground missiles are no longer available. To further discourage the player from using guided missiles, some enemy planes constantly dispense an endless supply of flares, making guns the only option. H.A.W.X 2 puts more emphasis on co-op games. According to G4TV, "it feels like the game is primarily intended to be a co-op game."[5] The game adds a new class of electronic warfare planes designed specifically for co-op games. These planes carry ECM devices but do not have guns. In a co-op game, a player flying these planes must keep a distance from the action; his or her participation amounts to a rather dull job of keeping friendly planes within the support range of his or her ECM device. The game also features a multiplayer deathmatch in which up to eight players can play against each other. The PC version of the game supports mouse and keyboard for controlling planes; however, only keyboard may be used to control AC-130 guns or operator-guided ordnance. Wii version of H.A.W.X 2 is an entirely different video game, except in terms of branding. It requires a Wii nunchuck. The player mainly takes control of manned combat jets and helicopters. There are unique missions in which the player is in control of a UAV, a space shuttle, a space-based beam cannon, a free-falling man and a pet peregrine falcon. Missions in the game (with the exception of mentioned unique missions) are classified into three categories. The first allows the player to fly a combat jet and use missiles and guns to engage enemy air (and occasionally ground) targets. The player's point of view is outside the plane. The second puts the player in control of a plane that can only fly close to the ground. Armed with guns and unguided rockets, the player has to engage ground targets. The point of view is behind the plane. These missions arevery fast-paced and the target acquisition window is small. Overall, they resemble shoot 'em up games with a different camera angle. The third puts the player into the cockpit of an aircraft, as opposed to the previous two. The plane flies close to the ground and fires guns and guided rockets that hit exactly where the player highlights on the ground. The pace of these missions is slower, the aircraft has more room to maneuver in the 3D space, and the player has a far broader choice of targets. Each mission can be played with the aircraft on autopilot or manual control. Changing the control type requires restarting the mission. Some missions are best played on autopilot whereas others need manual control. Flares and aerial defense countermeasures are not available in this game. The player has to shoot down incoming missiles using guns. The game takes place after an unknown period of time following the events of the first game but none of the characters of the first game, except David Crenshaw, are mentioned. The game begins with Crenshaw (now a Colonel) piloting a routine patrol mission in the Middle East. After stopping an insurgent attack, a volley of cruise missiles is fired at the Prince Faisal Air Force Base where Crenshaw is about to land. One of the missiles disables Crenshaw's aircraft, resulting in Crenshaw being captured by the enemy. A Ghost Recon squad and an AC-130 gunship from H.A.W.X rescue Crenshaw. After his rescue, Crenshaw stays on-board an aircraft carrier due to an injured arm and commands a remote surveillance operation with agent Drachev of the Russian Voron agency. (This agency is briefly introduced in Splinter Cell: Conviction.) Following the recon mission, H.A.W.X and the U.S. military conduct a large scale military operation to eliminate the insurgents and secure the region. The operation spans three days of fighting during which H.A.W.X flies several missions. Meanwhile, Russia is at a civil war with its separatists. Despite the best efforts of its pilots – Colonel Denisov and Captain Sokov – Russian military bases fall to the separatists. In the aftermath of the fall, the Russian Air Force is sent to support Spetsnaz in recovering stolen nuclear warheads from the separatists in Romaniskhov. They recover only two out of the three warheads and their transport aircraft is shot down during extraction. Denisov and Sokov provide air support to the best of their abilities, but their commanding officer General Morgunov orders them to blow up the Nevskaya Dam, allegedly to flood the region and prevent the warheads from falling into enemy hands. In the aftermath, a nuclear warhead is detonated in the Romashkino oil field, crippling Russia's energy supplies. Consequently, Russian Ultranationalists seize control of Russia and start a war with Europe to obtain the much-needed resources by force. While Sokov is piloting a UAV to kill the separatist leaders, Drachev contacts him and has him listen on a phone call between one of the separatists members and General Morgunov, revealing that the events in Russia had been a ruse for the Russian ultranationalists to sabotage Russia's energy industry and seize control of the Russian government. After being privy of the truth, Sokov escapes on a Su-30 and defects to Crenshaw with the incriminating evidence. H.A.W.X then undertakes an operation to secure one of the remaining warheads in Cape Town. Meanwhile, the Royal Navy repels an assault by the Russian Navy and pushes deep into Russian waters. When the combined forces of the United States and Europe take the war to the Russian lands, H.A.W.X and Sokov fly a mission on Moscow. The Kremlin is captured by a Ghost Recon squad but Morgunov, who seems to have gone mad, flees to a Russian ICBM launch facility. He intends to launch nuclear missiles at every major city of the world, allegedly to kill the so-called mysterious people who control everyone and everything including him and Russia. H.A.W.X is sent in support of the ground forces to capture or destroy the facility. Denisov and his pilots fight H.A.W.X and are killed. In a last-ditch effort, Morgunov activates Russian orbital laser platforms and wipes out all H.A.W.X planes except Hunter's, who destroys the underground command bunker, killing Morgunov in it. Crenshaw swears to nominate Hunter for every medal in the United States military. The game tells the story of Arrow, a mercenary pilot initially in the employment of DDI, a ruthless private military corporation. Arrow does not approve of the DDI's lack of morality and eventually leaves the PMC to join its sworn enemy, H.A.W.X. The main adversaries in this game are DDI – whose CEO Rainmaker has world domination plans – and a mysterious mercenary ace codenamed Major Zeal. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS OS: Win Vista 32 Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 1.8GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3600+ Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 3850 or NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT System Memory: 2 GB RAM Storage: 9 GB Hard drive space

Deathlord is role-playing video game set in Japan created by Al Escudero and David Wong. It was published by Electronic Arts for the Apple II and Commodore 64 in 1987. Deathlord has a world of 16 continents, 128 unique monsters, and 20 dungeons, yet fits on two double-density 5¼" floppy disks. The world of Lorn is under attack from the Deathlord's forces. The Emperor of Kodan has sent word asking for a party to defeat the Deathlord. The party must search the world to find seven words, six items, venture into Hell, defeat the Deathlord, and return. There is no linear path to the goals, and much of the story lies in subtext as the developer chose to keep dialog options to a minimum within the game. The game plays as a turn based, top down, tile mapped CRPG. The player would create a party of up to 6 characters to move about the world, searching for secrets and fighting monsters. It used most of the keys on the keyboard, mapping them to specific actions. There is only one savegame slot, and the game autosaves if the party moves to another location or a party member dies. A party, once killed, needs a new party to resurrect them. Before a player can begin the game proper, they were asked to go to the utility menu and make a copy of the scenario disk. They could also import characters from other games here if they desired. Once scenario disks were made, the player then created their party of 6 characters from the 8 races and 16 classes available. They weren't limited to just 6 characters, however, and could keep a roster of other characters to switch out in the future, but any time they did, the party would be returned to the starting point of the game. Deathlord came in an album style box and included two double sided disks, The first containing a side for booting the game, and a side containing utilities while the other disk was the scenario disk containing the unaltered version of the game world. The box also included a paper manual and quick reference card. The utility disk would let players import characters from The Bard's Tale, Wizardry and Ultima III, as well as rename characters. Originally, the game was intended to have a Norse/Teutonic theme, But marketing department at Electronic Arts gave Al Escudero 5 weeks to change the assets (art, story, spell names, equipment names, location names, etc.). Computer Gaming World's Scorpia in 1988 described Deathlord as "A mediocre effort at best" and "a compendium of standard CRPG features glossed over with a tinge of pseudo-Orientalism by pasting Japanese names on as much as they could". Criticisms included poor documentation, poor class balance, and meaningless character alignment. The game hid the townspeople with important pieces of information, making mapping necessary, and frequently the player had to search many squares in an area for an important item. She described a dungeon as "one of the most idiotic dungeons ever", with a two-level maze of locked and fake doors, with a diagonal passage full of teleports and fake walls above. Without a lack of mapping aids, this was very difficult, especially in sixteen-level dungeons that did not contribute to the story. In 1993, Scorpia called the game "poorly designed and implemented mishmash with a quasi-Ultima look", "extremely pointless", and "definitely one to avoid". Compute! discussed the game's high difficulty and poor quality of the manual. The magazine stated that Deathlord was not the most impressive game, but was a good one. Home of the Underdogs's Sarinee Achavanuntakul calls Deathlord "One of the best, largest, and most underrated RPGs ever made" and goes on to say it, "offers a unique gameworld inspired by Japanese myths, plenty of traditional exploration-based fun, and the largest map ever made for an Apple II and Commodore 64 game." Richard Garriott of Origin Systems believed that Deathlord unduly resembled Origin's Ultima games. He ended Origin's affiliation with EA after the company published it, and later Ultima games included a pirate character named Pirt Snikwah. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Memory:1 GB Graphics Card:NVIDIA GeForce 510 BoneBone: Rise of the Deathlord CPU:Intel Core i7-7Y75 File Size:1 GB OS:Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10

Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific (known in the United States as Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific) is a computer submarine simulation for Windows developed by Ubisoft Bucharest and published by Ubisoft in 2007. It places the player in command of an American submarine during World War II and takes place in the Pacific theater. The game allows players a variety of play modes including career, single war patrol and single battle engagements. An expansion pack, The U-Boat Missions, was released in 2008. The simulation uses detailed and accurate 3D graphics to immerse the player in the environment of a World War II submarine. The systems of the vessel are largely functional and the player is exposed to many aspects of submarine warfare of the time. The game allows the player to choose how realistic and challenging the game experience is to be and it is designed to allow new players to easily master the basic game play, while allowing for experienced users to manually control systems such as crew management, torpedo allocation, radar, sonar and target trigonometry. Like its predecessor Silent Hunter 3, the simulation features a dynamic campaign. The game gives players various mission objectives and unique rewards, and attempts to make each campaign a unique experience. The major naval battles of the war in the Pacific, such as the Battle of Midway, are re-enacted and players are informed of them by in-game radio messages. Unlike the earlier title, however, the game gives more specific and varied mission objectives during the campaign—including rescues, reconnaissance and agent insertions—rather than just assigning a specific patrol area. Until Ubisoft shut down the servers for the game in 2013,Silent Hunter 4 featured an online adversarial mode and gave players the opportunity to command Japanese destroyers and pit them against US submarines. Servers supported up to eight players and let them choose from several scripted and generated missions. The game received "generally favorable reviews" according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.Due to concerns relating to the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, as well as U.S. federal laws regarding depictions of the Medal of Honor, the original release of the game awarded players with fictional decorations which in no way resembled actual United States military awards. This drew heavy criticism from many players, leading to several mods which altered the game to display actual United States decorations. The original "shelf version" of the game was never updated; all game versions, including those downloadable on Steam, continue to depict fictional awards in lieu of actual United States combat decorations. On October 31, 2007 Ubisoft announced The U-Boat Missions add-on to Silent Hunter 4. It was released in Europe on February 29, 2008 and in North America on March 24, 2008. The expansion focuses on the German U-boat campaign in the Indian Ocean (the Monsun Gruppe). The U-boat Missions add-on features new strategic elements, new playable submarines, an improved navigation map, and an improved upgrade system. With the arrival of the German campaign, players gain control over additional strategic resources other than their own submarines.These resources can be used towards the goal of sinking enemy shipping by either helping the player locate enemies – i.e. the scout planes – or by directly attacking them.These strategic support features are available only for the new German campaign in U-Boat Missions. The unlocking of these auxiliary units are based on the player’s rank, and the rank is achieved based on the number of successful patrols and renown that has been gained. Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific Gold (Silent Hunter: Wolves of the Pacific Gold Edition in North America) was released on October 11, 2008. It includes the main game and the expansion pack. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Supported OS: Windows XP / Vista (Only) Processor: 2GHz Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon (3GHz Pentium or AMD Athlon recommended) RAM: 1 GB (2 GB recommended) Video Card: 128 MB RAM DirectX 9-compliant video card capable of rendering Pixel Shader 2.0 (256 MB RAM recommended) (see supported list*) Sound Card: DirectX 9-compliant sound card DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c or later (included on disc) DVD-ROM: 4x or faster DVD drive Hard Drive Space: 6 GB Multiplayer: 128 kbps upstream or faster (512 kbps upstream or faster needed to host online games)

Ultima IX: Ascension is the ninth and final part of the main series of the role-playing video game series Ultima. Developed by Origin Systems and published by Electronic Arts, Ultima IX was released in 1999 for Microsoft Windows after years in development hell. Following the Avatar's escape from Pagan, he is transported back to Britannia for one final battle with the Guardian, who is increasingly ruining the physical and moral fabric of that land by use of eight columns. The Avatar must fight his way to the runes of virtue found in each of the columns, and cleanse them in the shrines of Virtue, then face off against the Guardian himself. A difference from previous Ultima games is that in Ultima IX the player has less control of what path to take in the game. Most areas of Britannia are blocked off until specific tasks are completed, reducing the amount of initial exploration available to the player. The game world is rendered in a detailed and seamless manner, but Britannia is much smaller in overall area than previous games. For example, Britain, the largest city of Britannia, consists of only a few buildings. In the beginning of Ultima IX, the Avatar had somehow returned to Earth for an unspecified amount of time before getting back to Britannia. The game starts just after the end of Ultima VIII, in which the Avatar is transported to a Guardian-controlled Britannia. He arrives in Britannia on a mountain overlooking the Guardian's keep in Terfin. The Avatar is transported to Stonegate by Hawkwind the Seer (from Ultima IV), who informs him that great columns have appeared throughout the land, and their malignant influence has caused plagues, famine, and other natural disasters. Under their power, the people of Britannia have twisted the Virtues into mockeries of their true meaning. The Guardian is helped by Lord Blackthorn, who leads the Wyrmguards and forces the people to obey the Guardian. As the quest progresses, the Avatar learns that the Guardian has stolen the Runes of the Virtues and twisted them into the glyphs that form the heart of each of the columns. Most of the game consists of traveling through the dungeons to recover the glyphs and visiting the Shrines of the Virtues to meditate and cleanse them. Eventually, it is revealed that the Guardian is nothing other than the dark half of the Avatar himself, and the only way to save Britannia is for the Avatar to ascend to a higher plane, taking the Guardian with him. The player is able to accomplish this via an Armageddon spell cast behind a Barrier of Life, which takes the Avatar and the Guardian to a higher plane out of Britannia. Origin Systems released a number of preview video clips in the five years between the original release of Ultima VIII and the final release of Ultima IX in December 1999, first in the Ultima Collection and intermittently in between. These screenshots and clips pointed to a totally different plot from the released version, which many longtime fans of the Ultima saga agreed was unsatisfying and unrewarding. On December 9, 1999, a synopsis of the original script was posted to the "Ultima Horizons" discussion board. The synopsis was written by Bob White and released with his permission.White worked directly with Garriott, John Watson, and Brian Martin in developing the game's original story before leaving Origin. The beginning of the game is more or less the same as the beginning of the actual Ultima IX release, except that the Avatar never actually returns to Earth after his sojourn in Pagan in Ultima VIII. Just as in the official plot, there are also columns created by the Guardian with malignant influence. Further, Lord British has become enfeebled and left government of the kingdom in the hands of a tribunal consisting of the lords of the cities of Moonglow, Britain, and Jhelom, but they have proved unable to deal with the crises and have fractured into mutually distrustful city-states that are, at the time the Avatar arrives, at the brink of war. The Guardian is behind all of this, orchestrating these events with the aid of Lord Blackthorn, but few within the kingdom suspect this. Among those suspicious is Samhayne, a benevolent smuggler of contraband and food supplies to the various cities. He enlists the aid of the Avatar to find proof of these shadowy mani[CENSORED]tions that are causing Britannia to disintegrate. With the help of his longtime friends Shamino and Iolo and Samhayne's protégé Raven, they uncover that Lord Blackthorn is secretly advising members of the council and goading them to war. Blackthorn is unmasked just as the armies of the council have taken the field of battle. He is eventually caught later on at Terfin, and executed at Lord British's command, but the Guardian escapes. The Avatar and Lord British then travel to Stonegate for the final confrontation with the Guardian, but after it appears that they had successfully killed him, they are told that it is not enough. The columns that the Guardian created have embedded themselves too deeply within the very fabric of Britannia itself, and soon they will destroy the world, funnelling the power of its destruction back into the Guardian, resurrecting him and making him even stronger. The only way to destroy the Guardian is to extinguish the life force of Britannia itself, but the people may be saved by evacuating them to the island of Skara Brae and using the power of the Runes of Virtue to protect them. The Spell of Armageddon is cast, Britannia is destroyed, along with the Guardian and Lord British, but the Avatar ascends to a higher plane of existence by the power of the spell. The people that were evacuated to Skara Brae are protected by the Runes and they live on, to find another world to call their own. This plot specifically compares the destruction of Britannia and the island of Skara Brae flying off into space with the Roger Dean paintings from the album Yessongs. There have been at least four distinct versions of Ultima IX in development, which have differed in both storyline elements and technological implementation. The first version was as it was conceived of by Ultima creator Richard Garriott during his initial planning for the third Ultima trilogy as Origin began to work on Ultima VII. The original concept for the third Ultima trilogy appeared to have focused on the Avatar's conflict with the enigmatic Guardian, each game taking place in a different world: Ultima VII in Britannia, Ultima VIII in the conquered world of Pagan, and Ultima IX in the Guardian's homeworld itself. Also, Ultima 9 was planned to be built on the isometric Ultima 8 engine. Criticism of Ultima VIII altered Origin's plans for Ultima IX, which Garriott told Computer Gaming World in 1994 would go "back to the virtues that made Ultima as distinctive as it was originally". Warren Spector—the producer of Ultima V and VI, whom Garriott put in charge of IX development—hoped that it would depict the Avatar on a quest for virtue with a more integrated story than in IV, the game many believed was the best of the series.The second version of IX was developed between 1995 and 1997. In a text file included with the final patch (v2.12) for Ultima VIII, called "fans.txt", it is stated that "The design of Ultima IX (which is still in progress) relies heavily on this feedback and has resulted in a dramatic turnaround back toward classic role-playing. Even better, it has resulted in a classic Britannian Ultima."At this point, the gameplay of Ultima IX would have been re-located to Britannia, and a new storyline would have to be written to incorporate this change. Garriott said that the game would be the final one in the original Ultima universe, concluding both the Guardian trilogy and the Avatar Chronicles. He shared his other plans for the game: "Ultima VII had the most detailed world, so we're going to take that detail level, we're including a huge ethic parable like those of Ultima V and VI, and it will contain the hard-core role-playing elements of the first three games, with a complete set of skills and attributes. From a technology standpoint, we've tried to add the visual detail levels of Ultima VIII, but we'll drop that control method." By early 1996, the first screenshots of Ultima IX appeared in gaming magazines and Origin started to reveal some information about the plot and gameplay aspects of the game.These previews of the game demonstrated the software-rendered 3D engine that now powered Ultima IX. The camera appeared locked into an overhead view that approximated the isometric point of view of VIII, but could be rotated about its vertical axis and zoomed in or out. Images of the pre-rendered cinematics also began to appear at this time. Some of these images showed the Avatar in a rocky, barren landscape with a red sky and it was at this time that it was first stated that the Avatar had actually arrived in Britannia at the end of VIII and that the Guardian had now conquered the world. With the unexpected success of the beta phase of Ultima Online (UO), Origin moved most of the IX team to work on that game in late 1996. By the time work resumed on the game in late 1997, corporate interest in IX had greatly diminished, many of the original team members had left Origin, and the 3D engine was already becoming out of date. IX had a technically impressive game engine, but it was completely software-rendered and would not be able to compete with newer engines taking advantage of 3D hardware acceleration Once IX had resumed production in late 1997, Origin hired Ed del Castillo, who had produced such hits as Command & Conquer, as producer of the title. The third version of the game was developed between 1997 and 1998. The Ultima IX team experimented with different camera angles in the now hardware-accelerated 3D engine and decided that a third-person over-the-shoulder perspective, similar to that used in Tomb Raider, made for a more immersive gaming experience. Over the next few months, it was revealed that the game would no longer have a party of companions for the Avatar and would once again be a single-character game. The amount of art and voice recording work required meant that there would not be a female Avatar option. The plot had changed as well. Many aspects of the previous plot still seemed to be present, but Britannia appeared to be a world much more firmly under the Guardian's grasp. The player would control the Avatar throughout most of the game, but some parts of the game would put him in control of Lord British, Shamino, or the female pirate Raven. In early 1998, several designers of the game, including lead designer Bob White, left Origin. By the middle of 1998, del Castillo resigned due to "philosophical differences", Garriott took a more active role in the production of the game, and Seth Mendelsohn joined the team as lead designer.They re-wrote the entire story for the game, now focusing on the Avatar's final visit to Britannia, and the reaction of the people of Britannia to this news. Some elements of the previous storyline were kept, presumably to make use of the existing (and expensive) pre-rendered cinematics, but most of them were either heavily edited or used in a dramatically different context than originally intended, and sometimes both. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10. 1.8 GHz. 512 MB RAM. 3D graphics card compatible with DirectX 7 (compatible with DirectX 9 recommended) 2GB HDD.

Armored Core: For Answer is a 3D vehicular combat mecha-based video game developed by FromSoftware and published by Ubisoft for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It is the 13th installment of FromSoftware's Armored Core series. Armored Core: For Answer is the direct sequel to Armored Core 4, and takes place around ten years later. AC customization has been changed from the previous Armored Core title, with a new interface and many new parts not found in Armored Core 4. Online mode returns with a new co-operative mode alongside the player versus mode. Gameplay enhancements included a power increase for both Quick Boost and Over Boost, as well as an auxiliary high-speed booster, which is known as the Vanguard Over Booster (VOB). Another new feature in the game is the Assault Armor attack that becomes available by equipping certain OB parts. This attack uses up all available Primal Armor that the AC has and generates a huge blast consisting of Kojima (highly reactive particles) that destroys or damages all objects surrounding the AC. However, this also leaves the AC vulnerable because not only will the AC lose its PA, it will also not regenerate for a few seconds. Laser blades are deadlier because of the revamped laser blade attack. Once the blade has acquired a lock-on, the AC will instantly rush to the target, traveling a great distance to use the laser blade. All parts carried over from the previous game have had their parameters altered, much like the transition between previous series installments Silent Line and Nexus. The on-screen HUD can now be changed to any of 20 colors. There are now 442 FRS tuning points available to unlock, which is an increase from the 300 (PS3) and 337 (Xbox 360) FRS points available in AC4. Maps are much larger and more detailed including environmental damage such as collapsing buildings. The game is also the second in the series (after Last Raven) to feature multiple endings, with three different possible plot branches available depending on your actions and decisions in the game. Armored Core: For Answer received "mixed or average" reviews on both platforms according to the review aggregator website Metacritic. One of the most consistent complaints among reviewers seemed to be the lack of any sort of online community. Kevin Van Ord of GameSpot stated in his review that there were "fewer than a dozen [players on] Xbox Live" when he tried to playtest the game, and that similar attempts to find a game on PlayStation Network yielded "just a single opponent". In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 29 out of 40 for the PlayStation 3 version,And one nine and three sevens for the Xbox 360 version,while Famitsu Xbox 360 gave the latter console version 31 out of 40. Armored Core for Answer is the most recent iteration of the niche Armored Core franchise that first started on the PSone in the late '90s. Combing in-depth customization options with a fairly fast-paced, arcade-style action shooter, Armored Core is fun but has always catered to a very select audience. Answer, as the name indicates, is not technically a proper sequel to its predecessor nor is it a tremendous leap over the original in terms of its feature set or visuals. Like several of the other Armored Core titles, Answer offers new missions and a few minor tweaks, but everything else is about the same. But that's okay with me. I've actually been a fan of the franchise since the original titles on the PSone, but Armored Core is the type of series that's best to revisit after a long hiatus. Answer is the first Armored Core game that I've really delved into in a long while and thus suits me perfectly. If you're trying to decide whether to purchase this one or not, your choice will be made infinitely more difficult if you just bought Armored Core 4 last year. Although Answer is an improvement, your decision depends entirely on how much money you want to spend on a few new bits of content. If you're approaching Answer from a fresh perspective and you belong to the somewhat eccentric mech-fan crowd like I do, then this title is going to be a lot of fun, despite its flaws. What I've always loved about the Armored Core franchise is the style and emotion running underneath third-person mech combat. The ACs (Armored Cores -- a mech's proper name) are more than just massive war machines; they're symbols for a variety of things: angels, demons, warriors, corporations, etc. This symbolism has always been incredibly cool for me, but it simultaneously serves as one of the franchise's weak points. The story of Armored Core has never been terribly fleshed out, but the inklings that are given to players -- whether through mission briefings, voice-only dialogues or battle chatter -- hint at something desperate and nostalgic in tone. But what From Software has always tried to deliver is customization and action, and both are in full abundance here. Before entering battle, Armored Core feels very much like a sim game, where you can build your AC from scratch and purchase a menagerie of parts, like arms, legs, heads, weapons, boosters, generators, stabilizers -- I could go on. Almost any type of mech you could imagine from a typical anime can be constructed in Armored Core. If you want to design a light-weight sniper unit that can cut through the air with ease, you can do so. Or, if you prefer loading up a heavily-armored beast with enough firepower to level a city, the option's there. Building your AC is half the fun of Armored Core and that's still the case here. To add a cherry to the top, Answer also gives you extensive paint and emblem options to add a personal touch to your AC. If you want to ride into battle and lay waste to your enemies in an AC covered with green penguins, you're welcome to do so. Actually getting into a battle changes the dynamic of Armored Core quite a bit. After accepting a task from a branching mission menu, you'll be treated to a highly stylized briefing that not only breaks down your objectives but gives you a little insight into the world of Armored Core. Depending on what company you support, different missions will be opened up to you and you'll see varying perspectives of the conflict which rages across the Earth's surface and through the skies. Once your adorable little war machine finds its way onto the battlefield, Armored Core feels more like an action arcade game than a mech simulation. Although controlling your AC can still be a very technical experience (you have to manage ammo count, heat levels and tons of baddies), the action is extremely fast-paced, and using your AC's boosters is a necessary part of gameplay. You'll be flying around the screen and blowing stuff up in no time. Gamers unfamiliar with the Armored Core formula might be a little confused at first during some of the beginning missions. Yes, your AC NEXT (the class assigned to highly advanced ACs) can take on MTs and NORMALs without much of a problem. You'll take damage if you're not paying attention, but usually you can boost through a level and decimate your unsuspecting opponents with little opposition. It's when you face an enemy NEXT that the game really gets insane -- almost too crazy for my tastes. Sometimes, facing off again another AC can be extremely frustrating because the computer can quickly boost and fly around you and still land some fairly absurd shots, without you coming close to keeping up. This isn't always the case, but some NEXTs will trounce you and then walk away whistling. I appreciate the challenge of a good battle, and the frantic pacing of AC fights is definitely a thrill, but it would have been nice had From Software found some sort of middle ground between the laughably easy and excruciatingly tough. What Answer does boast over its predecessor is Arms Forts confrontations. Arms Forts are massive mobile fortresses that your AC must take out for certain missions. While some of them are just oversized tanks, there are others that take up entire stages and are actually impressive. These fights add something to the mix and spice up the missions, which are otherwise typical for the franchise. The other main addition to Answer is online cooperative play, or Partnerships. I can assure you that taking on a mission (for money, no less) with another player is sweet. Not all the missions are cooperative, unfortunately, as some of them are supposed to be one-on-one battles, but during my time with Answer it seemed like most of the tasks at hand were multiplayer accessible. Of course, you'll have to split the reward with your teammate, but the cooperative dynamic works very well. I was also surprised at how well most of the matches ran, both on the PS3 and 360. There really wasn't much lag to speak of and the missions only took a bit longer to load than normal.

F1 Championship Season 2000 is a video game of the racing genre released in 2000 for various home consoles and handhelds. It is based on the 2000 Formula One season, and was developed and published by EA Sports and released for the Macintosh, PlayStation 2, PlayStation, Microsoft Windows and Game Boy Color. In European PS2 copies of the game, when the player overtakes the car ahead, the latter will accelerate, especially in corners, beyond the difficulty level chosen. The PC, PlayStation, and PlayStation 2 versions received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.In Japan, where the PS2 version was ported for release on March 1, 2001, Famitsu gave it a score of 28 out of 40. Only eight months since its F1 2000, EA Sports returns once again with its latest Formula 1 racing game, F1 Championship Season 2000. While this iteration uses the Visual Systems F1 2000 engine as its base, a multitude of refinements and additions helps elevate F1 Championship Season 2000 above mere sequel. The game includes all the real drivers, teams, and tracks of the 2000 FIA Formula One World Championship season as well as the usual smattering of time trial, GP weekend, championship, versus, and practice modes common to F1 video games. However, the addition of two new features is what really gets F1 Championship Season 2000 going in the right direction. The first, an interactive training mode, uses cones and an announcer to guide you through each of the game's 17 tracks, focusing on speed, braking, racing lines, and even proper pit strategy. The second new addition is one that is long overdue - a scenario mode. The game feature ten real-world scenarios from the 2000 racing season, so you won't just be stuck racing hundreds of laps over the course of the year; you'll also get to test your mettle in a variety of underdog racing situations. F1 Championship Season 2000's gameplay fires on all cylinders. Control is tight, whether you use analog or digital D-pad steering, and unlike F1 2000 there's no hint of sluggish response - no more than would really occur from steering a 200mph tin can anyway. The game's artificial intelligence is similarly impressive. Competing drivers block your car or attempt to nudge your wheels for an advantage, but they also make enough minor mistakes to seem human. Although subtle, veteran drivers such as Hakkinen and Schumacher drive better than their rookie counterparts, and they always seem to be the ones occupying the upper ten race positions. Racing physics is where F1 Championship Season 2000 really shines though: Skids, spinouts, and drafting response are all realistically executed. As such, careful braking and speed control are of the utmost importance - just like in real Formula One racing. While the game lets you tweak downforce, height, diffuser, gear ratios, suspension options, and fuel load, it's also important to note that all of the game's realism options may be adjusted. If you're an arcade-racing fanatic, you can disable weather, fuel loss, damage, and body tweaking, or you can engage the automatic braking and speed control. However, if you're an F1 simulation nut, setting the game to hard difficulty and enabling every realism option should satiate your cravings. While F1 Championship Season 2000 succeeds in gameplay, it absolutely destroys the competition when it comes to visuals. The game's 17 tracks have been re-created to real-world specifications, such that they contain all of the landmarks and pitfalls F1 racing fans have come to know and love. From the curves in Indianapolis to that brutal dip at Hockenheim, F1 Championship Season 2000's track designs are spot on. As you drive past at 150mph, trees, billboards, and spectator stands seem to glide by with the same fluidity you'd witness in a television broadcast. Car models are realistic and contain all of the appropriate decals, sponsor logos, and tire markings you'd expect to see on a fresh-off-the-lot Formula 1 vehicle. Of course, once you take that bad boy into a race, your lovely car will end up with grass-stained tires, shattered wings, and smudged paint. EA has even included such visual amenities as heat distortion, realistic weather, persistent skid marks, and five different camera angles - all with zero hint of slowdown or texture warping. By taking its previous F1 2000 engine, fixing a ton of bugs, building upon the in-game environment, and wrapping things up in a broadcast feel, EA Sports has made F1 Championship Season 2000 the PlayStation's most visually appealing Formula 1 racing title to date. In the audio department, F1 Championship Season 2000 flawlessly succeeds at re-creating the F1 racing experience. Vehicle engines roar with that noticeable high-pitched whine of F1 cars; the pit crew goes nuts when you overtake another driver; and crash effects sound as crunchy as smashing fiberglass ought to. Minor details such as the combined engine roar of 22 on-track vehicles or tires fumbling over road markers also add to the game's realistic approach, while pit crew audio tips really pull you into the game. A greater variety of in-game commentary would be nice, but superb track sounds and a psychotic pit team coupled with television style pre/post-race commentary more than make up for this minor shortcoming. In the audio department, F1 Championship Season 2000 flawlessly succeeds at re-creating the F1 racing experience. Vehicle engines roar with that noticeable high-pitched whine of F1 cars; the pit crew goes nuts when you overtake another driver; and crash effects sound as crunchy as smashing fiberglass ought to. Minor details such as the combined engine roar of 22 on-track vehicles or tires fumbling over road markers also add to the game's realistic approach, while pit crew audio tips really pull you into the game. A greater variety of in-game commentary would be nice, but superb track sounds and a psychotic pit team coupled with television style pre/post-race commentary more than make up for this minor shortcoming.

F1 Racing Simulation is a racing simulation game, developed for Microsoft Windows by Ubisoft in 1997.It is first of the Racing Simulation games made by Ubisoft, being the predecessor to Racing Simulation 2, which was released in 1998.The game is based on the Formula One 1996 Season. The game received "favorable" reviews, two points shy of universal acclaim, according to the review aggregation website GameRankings.GameSpot said: "F1 Racing Simulation is an extremely well-thought-out simulation with drivers of all abilities in mind." Next Generation reviewed the PC version of the game, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "The only area in which the game suffers in comparison to Formula 1 Championship Edition is that the FOCA license obtained for the game is for the 1996 season and thus features the drivers and tracks from two years ago. For die-hard racing enthusiasts this is an important point, but for the more casual gamer, rest assured that the graphics and gameplay elements of F1 Racing Simulation more than make up for this lapse." F1 Racing Simulation was a finalist for Computer Gaming World's 1998 "Best Driving" award, which ultimately went to Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit. The editors wrote, "In a less competitive year, UbiSoft's excellent F1 Racing Simulation would have won hands down."PC Gamer US likewise nominated F1 as the best racing game of 1998, although it lost to Motocross Madness. They wrote of F1, "Lip-smacking graphics, a solid physics model, and a full-featured garage for adjusting your vehicle are combined into a package that delivered the goods in a major way." F1 Racing Simulation received a "Gold" award from the Verband der Unterhaltungssoftware Deutschland (VUD) in August 1998,for sales of at least 100,000 units across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.In the United States, F1 Racing Simulation was a commercial failure, with sales of 12,570 copies by April 1999. Discussing this performance, Ubisoft's Tammy Schachter argued that "the install base of 3D cards was not in place for mass-market sales" when the game launched. She also cited the relative unpo[CENSORED]rity of the Formula 1 sport in the United States. Driving simulations are usually somewhat unattractive to casual gamers because of the immense amount of time required to become a competitive driver. You must spend hours practicing and learning each circuit, then fine-tuning the car to be able to keep up with the pack. Although designer Geoff Crammond (of Grand Prix and Grand Prix II fame) realized the importance of aiding you in these areas, few other driving sims have followed suit. Considering the number and types of driving aids F1 Racing Simulation contains, it's probably safe to say that there are some Grand Prix II fans among the ranks at Ubi Soft. From the opening screen, you immediately have the choice between realistic and easy modes. Choose easy and a single race, and you're on the track, ready to roll. It's a straightforward arcade game in easy mode - turn on auto-gear and auto-brakes, and you do little more than steer. But for the true sim fan, realistic mode is the attraction - and F1 is pretty attractive indeed. If you're new to racing sims or want to graduate from arcade-style racing to simulation, F1 will accommodate you. Any racing sim fan knows that most of his time will be spent learning each circuit. In F1's training area there's a demonstration option that lets you sit back and watch another car run the track, letting you note the speed and gear of each turn before you get behind the wheel yourself. After that, you can choose to enter driving school, which will place you on an empty track with a ghost car to follow around (you can even save up to ten of your own ghost runs or download others). You can also turn on gear and speed recommendations until you learn them on your own. As you start to get more comfortable with the car and the circuit, you can start to toggle off some of the driving aids, particularly auto-gear and auto-brakes. The realism continues to increase from there. This sim is loaded with options you can toggle - there's anti-sliding (helps when exiting a turn), anti-skidding (helps acceleration), ABS (antilock brakes), and more. However, as helpful as F1 is for the driver, it isn't as thoughtful for the engineer. As with any racing sim, you're going to have to get your hands dirty and make a few adjustments to your car before a race - especially if you set the game to allow variable weather conditions. The only help the game gives you in the garage is some slim documentation about the F1 race car. There is a useful chart that shows how adjustments on one area of the car might affect another area and to what degree, but from there it depends on your own experimentation. To top it off, there aren't any preset configurations in the game, although there are some for download on Ubi Soft's web site. If you already know your way around open-wheel race cars, you shouldn't have much trouble in the garage. A nicely functional telemetry system lets you examine your car's performance in many different ways. You can choose up to eight different data sets to be plotted in the graph window for the custom information you're looking for. When you finally get into the race, expect to compete against some pretty crafty and aggressive drivers. And as long as you stay on your line, you won't encounter too many computer-controlled drivers plowing into your rear end. Car physics are also as good as in any other race sim, although the car seems to experience an inordinate amount of drag when the wheels touch anything but asphalt. F1 Racing Simulation is an extremely well-thought-out simulation with drivers of all abilities in mind. With a midrange to high-end PC and a 3D card, the game looks spectacular, although users of low- to midrange machines will pay the price when the number of cars onscreen can cause the frame rate to bog down considerably. (Just experiment with the graphics options in a single race to maintain a good frame rate before your first race of the season begins.) It would have been nice if the game adjusted the graphics detail on the fly to maintain a certain preset frame rate (as in Papyrus sims). Finally, the game only goes up to the 1996 season (it seems F1 demands a higher price for a more recent license). Other than that, there is little fault to be found. Fans of Grand Prix II should delight: F1 Racing Simulation has all that made GPII a classic and more. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS CPU: Intel Core i3 2130 / AMD FX 4300. RAM: 8 GB. HDD: 80 GB of storage space. GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 640 / HD7750. OS: 64-bit Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10. DirectX: Version 11. Screen Resolution: 720p. Network: Broadband Internet Connection.

Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath is an action-adventure video game developed by Oddworld Inhabitants and published by Electronic Arts for the Microsoft Xbox. It is a part of the Oddworld series. It was released on January 25, 2005. The game details the adventures of Stranger, a fearsome bounty hunter. Throughout the game, Stranger pursues and captures outlaws in order to collect bounties. The goal is to ultimately earn enough moolah (in-game money) to pay for a mysterious life-saving operation. One of the most notable features is the "live ammunition" system, which is ammunition made of living creatures like fictional insects and small mammals, each with different uses and effects against enemies. The game is re-released as part of the Oddboxx, a collection which includes all the Oddworld games released.It was scheduled to be released in the first quarter of 2010 on Windows through Steam,but became available on December 20, 2010.Development team Just Add Water developed an updated version of the game for release on the PlayStation 3 which was released on the PlayStation Network on December 21, 2011 in Europe and December 27, 2011 in North America. A mobile build was released in 2014 for Android and iOS. An Ouya build was released on January 27, 2015. A build for the Wii U was announced in June 2013, but as of August 2015 the build was placed on-hold.A Nintendo Switch port will be released on January 23, 2020. The premise of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath is that the player's character, called the Stranger, must capture wanted outlaws, dead or alive. The game utilizes both third and first-person perspectives. In third-person, the player controls Stranger when travelling long distances, platform jumping, rope climbing, and melee combat; and in first-person, ranged weapons are used. Enemies can be approached face-to-face, or by hiding out of enemy sight (as indicated on-screen) and luring foes from or toward the player.Once enemies are encountered, they can be killed or stunned; live captives earn the greater reward.Upon an attempted capture, Stranger is unable to perform other actions and thus is vulnerable. The player has two status bars: health and stamina. When damage is taken, the health bar drops; if it fully depletes, it will result in the death of Stranger. Stamina drops when the player performs actions like melee attacks or falls from a great height. While it refills itself over time, it can be used to shake off health-bar damage; thus healing the player, but draining the stamina more quickly. One of the game's main features is Stranger's crossbow, used in a first-person perspective, that uses live ammunition in the form of small fictional creatures as projectiles for differing effects. Live ammunition can be bought from the game's vendors or found throughout the game world. When acquired, two different kinds can be assigned to the crossbow at any given time:Stunkz to stun large groups of enemies, Thudslugs as cannonballs, Boombats as rockets, and Bees as small shots. The game incorporates many role-playing elements in the form of rewards spent on crossbow, ammunition, storage, and armour upgrades and other items such as binoculars and knuckle dusters. The game begins with a bounty hunter, known only as the Stranger, catching various Outlaws to raise money for a mysterious operation. He travels through three towns inhabited by the bird-like Clakkerz; Gizzard Gulch, Buzzarton, and finally New Yolk City. Midway through, he hears that a tribe of amphibian creatures called Grubbs are tormented by a demon. Their tribe was formerly protected by a race of centaur-like creatures called the Steef, but these are extinct. When Stranger is about to leave Buzzarton, he discovers that the river near the town has been dried up by a dam, built by a person called Sekto; and it is revealed that Sekto is responsible for the extinction of the Steef, and has offered a bounty for the last survivors. Sekto believes that the Stranger knows where the Steef are hiding, and hires an outlaw named D. Caste Raider to interrogate him. During the interrogation, Raider discovers that the Stranger is a Steef. After this revelation, the Stranger escapes to the Grubbs' village. When the Stranger meets the Grubb leader, he discovers that Sekto is the demon that stole the water from the Grubbs (thus depriving them of fish, their main food source), and sent Wolvark soldiers to guard the river and destroy any Grubb settlements they find. The Stranger then confronts Sekto. When Sekto is defeated, the dam is destroyed, freeing the water. As Stranger inspects Sekto's body, Sekto is revealed to be an octopus-like creature called an Octigi, who parasitically controlled the tribe's previous Steef.Sekto is then seen swimming away in the newly freed Mongo River. SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo or Athlon 64 x2 CPU SPEED: Info RAM: 2 GB OS: nVidia 6600 or better or ATI x1600 or better (256 MB+) VIDEO CARD: nVidia 6600 or better or ATI x1600 or better (256 MB+) PIXEL SHADER: 3.0 VERTEX SHADER: 3.0 SOUND CARD: Yes FREE DISK SPACE: 4 GB DEDICATED VIDEO RAM: 256 MB