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We currently live in the period where some MMO-RPGs (Massive multiplayer online - Role playing games) dominate the gaming era. These titles include the all too famous World of Warcraft, Hellgate: London and even the amusing MapleStory. However, if any gamer were to perhaps spend some time investigating the origins of these genre of games, he would probably find out about one of the earliest kinds of RPGs ever invented, MUDs, which is exactly what Imperian is.

MUD refers to Multi-User Dungeon, or more recently, Multi-User Dimension. In a nutshell, imagine you are playing an RPG based on text, with no graphics at all. The text-driven game is identical to any RPGs in terms of gameplay, allowing you to interact with other players, objects, events as well as non-player characters in a typically fantasy world. Since having appeared in 1977, MUDs have evolved into the more popular graphic games that are so common these days, however, a market still exists for MUD players today. The successful company behind Imperian, Iron Realms, owns 3 other similiar MUDs, with a new graphical RPG in the making as well.

The first impressions of a text-based game would be, "That's so shallow! What can I do in it, what's the fun of not being able to see anything?" On the contrary, Imperian offers depth and an immersing environment. Within the game, world which you can explore in is huge, numbering to over ten thousand rooms to roam about, with intricate political system based on the concept of role-playing, as well as a complicated combat system. The combat system is structured in such a way that a newer character, if he knows what he is supposed to do, could easily defeat an aged and experienced character within the game, making the focus on individual skill rather than the quality of equipment your character carries, cropping the advantage the older players would be expected to have.

However, the complicated systems and the compulsory rule for role-playing within the game causes the learning curve for Imperian to become extremely steep. Newer players would find themselves easily overwhelmed and find the complicated gameplay hard to understand at first, as well as being unable to adapt to the role-playing requirements of the game. In addition to that, despite Imperian being free to play, the game uses a skill system where you need to gain lessons in order to learn such skills. Only a very limited number of lessons will be provided for you as you progress within the game, so in order to make the fullest of your character, you would need to spend a considerable sum of money on the game to purchase "credits", which you use to convert into lessons to learn all of your skills.

Despite the steep learning curve for combat, as requiring a decent monetary capital in order to be able to fully enjoy all aspects of the game, Imperian serves as an addictive game which will simply draw you in for more once you get the hang of things. It is not surprising that some of the players describe the game as being "more addictive than drugs".

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Save the cheerleader, save the world. Sounds preposterous? Yet 'Heroes (TV Series)' has given this single line international fame and built an entire television series upon it. This television series went on to become an internationally acclaimed hit series, nominated for numerous Golden Globe and Emmy awards. Produced by Tim Kring, this series is into the second season in the USA, continuing from where the first season dramatically ended.

'Heroes' is a science fiction drama serial and revolves around a group of seemingly unconnected individuals who suddenly discover overnight that they possess superhuman abilities, such as the ability to fly, regenerate rapidly and teleport. A chain of events forces them to rapidly learn to control their newfound powers and to adapt to life with their new abilities. Eventually, each of their actions will culminate in them being involved in helping to avert a catastrophic explosion that threatened to rip New York City asunder.

The plot unfurls in a comic-book style, with each episode jumping from one story/character to another. The main characters include high school cheerleader Claire Bennet (who can regenerate spontaneously), Congress candidate Nathan Petrelli (who can defy gravity and fly), Japanese clerk Hiro Nakamura (who can 'control the space-time continuum'), Niki Sanders (who has a split personality and near superhuman strength) and day-nurse Peter Petrelli (who is able to absorb and retain powers of people who are in close proximity). Each of them is drawn out of the comfort/monotony of their normal life, to seek an answer about their inexplicable abilities. The characters eventually find out that they are all inexplicably linked together, and every action that they carry out actually has a significant effect on events of the future.

The plot is further spiced up with the introduction of a shady organization called simply 'The Company', which seeks to manipulate those with special abilities. Another antagonist, Sylar, also appears and his emergence threw the lives of the characters into complete disarray. Gabriel 'Sylar' Gray has the ability to know exactly how intricate objects function, and he manages to use this ability to steal abilities from others, by first killing them, then cutting up their heads to study their brains.

The show pilots with an episode showing a few of the random individuals with special abilities, one of them being Peter, who has recurrent dreams about him flying. As the story progresses, some of the characters meet, and their fates eventually intertwine. They all discover that sometime in the future, a large explosion would erupt in the heart of New York City and it was further revealed that this was caused by a man exploding. Peter and some of the others embark on a journey to try to prevent this disaster of cataclysmic proportions. However, soon they hit a snag as Peter realized that it was actually himself who exploded in the future after absorbing radioactive powers from another man. They were perpetually hounded by operatives from 'The Company' who want Peter to explode to further their own twisted agenda. Hot on their trail also is Sylar, the deranged serial killer who wants to drain their special abilities for his own.

This show has some really breathtaking special effects - Claire regenerating her horrifically-mangled hand to another man (D.L. Hawkins) walking through walls to a woman named Meredith controlling a ball of fire in her palm. Plot-wise, it is a very interesting mix of characters that the producers created. From the adorable and rather naive Hiro to the darkly brooding Niki, the idealistic Peter compared his pragmatic brother, Nathan; the characters' various antics provide for some very enjoyable entertainment. Character development was commendable, and one good example would be Noah Bennet (Claire's father). He was portrayed as a villain initially, but eventually he was a valuable help in averting a crisis, and it was revealed that his prior actions were driven by the desire to protect Claire.

Sometimes, it is difficult to fully follow the plot. More often than not, I find myself having to make use of the commercial breaks to run through the storyline in my head so that I could clearly understand what exactly was happening, such was the manner of twists and turns in the Heroes storyline. Other than the content being totally out-of-the-world, it is further exacerbated by Hiro's frequent jumps in the time, be it back to the past or on to the future.

Given that the majority of the cast are relatively unknown, I am actually seeing very impressive acting from the cast. The standard would not be any lower than any Hollywood blockbuster in cinemas today. The plot is a very addictive one, the audience would be very much tempted to keep watching to find out what Dr Suresh has found out regarding the link between human evolution and superhuman abilities or to find out how Sylar manages to systemically hunt down individuals to acquire their power. It is a very riveting watch and at the end of every episode, I would be sitting there wishing that the next episode would come sooner.

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While Internet Explorer has been the dominant web browser for the past decade or so since it began bundling it with its Windows OS, we have seen quite a few new web browsers surface over the years. Opera, Safari, and most importantly Mozilla Firefox. By now practically every single casual web surfer is either using or has at least heard of it before. Since it was first released back in 2004, Firefox has slowly gained momentum in the browser wars and with the latest beta released just a few days ago, it seems like the next major release of Mozilla Firefox 3, is only going to increase this momentum.

Note first of all that the program I'm reviewing is the Mac version and there might be slight differences between this version and the Windows/Linux version which I might not know of. That being said, the Mac version of the Firefox 3 beta works like a dream. In the past I've always favoured Apple's Safari over Firefox 2 because Firefox was basically a port of the Windows version, making it a very sluggish and irritating browser to use, especially when it takes like 5 to 10 seconds to open. However, despite only being a beta, Firefox 3 for the Mac runs a lot more smoothly in terms of performance. When you compare the speed at which it loads webpages with Firefox 2, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference, which is a good thing. In my opinion, rendering a website can only occur so fast and Firefox 2 is probably as good as it's gonna get.

Firefox 3 looks a lot better as well, but this probably only applies to the Mac version since Firefox 2 really looked pretty bad on the Mac. Now, Firefox feels a lot more like a program that belongs on a Mac instead of one being shoehorned onto the Mac. While it's just an aesthetic feature, it's surprising how big of an impact it makes.

When it comes to new features, Firefox 3 definitely doesn't come up short. From the release note, it's obvious that the development team hasn't been lazing around since it released Firefox 2 back in 2006. It's based on an updated rendering system that allows web applications like Gmail to run at "twice the speed", which is a pretty true claim since the lag times I used to experience while using Firefox with Gmail in the past no longer exist.

A brand new download manager has also been introduced which has a few new features. For example it has a search bar at the bottom so that you can quickly search through your downloads if you have a long record of them in the download manager. It also displays when and where you downloaded the file from, making it much easier to manage your downloads. Most importantly, users can now resume downloads even after you restart the browser or reset your internet connection as long as the server you're download from allows resumable downloads. This will hopefully save a lot of people some frustration if their internet connection gets dropped when their download reaches 99%.

One of the biggest problems that users have repeated complained about is Firefox's memory usage problem as Firefox is notorious for memory leaks after long periods of usage, seriously slowing down the user's computer even if he/she isn't doing much web surfing. Just letting it sit in the background will cause your other applications to experiecne a significant slowdown. Thankfully, Firefox 3 is addressing these problems by making use of new technology to prevent such memory leaks in the future. From my experience with it thus far, the development team has done a pretty good job, since I've been using Firefox for the entire day now without having to restart it even once and neither has it crashed on me yet, unlike Firefox 2.

However, being in its beta stages, this software is obviously far from perfect. Most plugins and themes (understandably) don't work with it yet and the in-built dictionary that was perfect in Firefox 2 now draws squiggly red lines under words like "doesn't", thinking it's an incorrect word. The text editing window that I'm typing this post in right now in Wordpress is also slightly buggy, occasionally not showing a space on screen even after I tap the spacebar several times. Still, all these are understandable problems that one would expect from a beta version of any piece of software. Just take note of this if you currently heavily rely on your Firefox plugins because none of them will work with this beta version, but it'd still be fun to download and play around with in anticipation for the final version.

With Netscape down for the count, only Firefox has a chance at unseating Internet Explorer as the dominant web browser. With Microsoft recently releasing the beta version of Internet Explorer 8 as well, it seems like the browser wars are far from over. Yet, from what we've seen from the beta version, Mozilla Firefox 3 just might have a shot at stealing even more IE users away from that darn browser. In fact, the only reason why this is getting a 4/5 rating is because it's the beta version, I can't wait to get my hands on the final version when it's ready.

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With the recent post about the Moshi Celesta Keyboard, I was tempted to post another review about yet another revolutionary keyboard - the much vaunted Razer Tarantula Gaming Keyboard. Touted as the big brother of the older Lycosa keyboard, the release of the Tarantula in early November 2006 sent the gaming world into a hype. It took Razer sometime to iron out creaks and a bug in the workings of the keyboard and the finished product was a gaming-intensive but still versatile keyboard.

On first glance, the Razer Tarantula does not look glamorous, especially sitting beside my Moshi Celesta. It is about 21 inches long, which is longer than your average keyboard, and wider too. It takes up more space than average, thus it might not be a good idea to try to fit the Razer Tarantula into sliding keyboard trays. The keys have a standard layout, but the orientation is slightly awkward at first and would take some getting used to. The keys are displaced slightly to the right, so first time users would find it disorientating, especially during games. The keyboard has a glossy black finish and a stylish Razer logo that lights up with LED lighting when the keyboard is plugged in.

The Razer Tarantula requires the plugging in of two separate USB cables, instead of the usual one, likely due to the constant LED glow taking up extra power. However, one need not worry about the keyboard using up USB ports on the computer needlessly - similar to the Celesta, the Tarantula has built in USB ports at the side, for plugging in mice or thumbdrives.

The main feature about the Tarantula that Razer boasts about is the 'anti-ghosting' capability. Anti-ghosting refers to the ability of the Tarantula to respond to simultaneous key presses on the keyboard, even when they are depressed all at the same time. This would be a very significant advantage for gamers playing First Person Shooters (FPS) or Real Time Strategy (RTS), as now they can perform multiple actions. There are also 10 macro keys on the Razer Tarantula that allows customizable programming of macros, for in-game use. Razer helpfully included several custom keys, labeled with knife and gun icons, for the user to install wherever they wish.

After a few days of use, one thing I did not like about the Razer Tarantula was how prone it was to leaving smudges or fingerprints on the exterior. The glossy surface has a rather slick and menacing look, but only when it's clean. Prepare to have a piece of smooth cloth to give it a wipe-through after usage. Also, due to the slightly different orientation of the keys, I tended to hit wrong keys very often, and it really took me quite a while to get used to it. There have also been much talk circulating online that the Tarantula was 'buggy', in the sense that many reprogrammed keys often did not work and commands being unable to be bound to keys. This required the release of many updates and patches for firmware and drivers by Razer.

What really impressed me was how fully customizable this keyboard was. Every single key can be remapped to serve a different function. By using the bundled software, settings can be made on-the-fly and on a very basic, idiot-proof interface. Furthermore the keyboard has an onboard 32KB memory to store key profiles, identical to that of the Razer gaming mice (like Lachesis).

If you have extra cash to splash out on a gaming accessory, I would recommend this. Complementing a good gaming mouse, your gaming experience would be very enjoyable indeed, as the Razer Tarantula Gaming Keyboard fully justifies the US$120 (US$79.99 now) price tag. Otherwise, if you are not fully into gaming, go for a cheaper, more functional keyboard.

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This is one of the main core game products from Nexon, Wizet & Asiasoft. MapleStory basically started off as a Korean 2D side-scrolling MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) which is unique in its own sense. What makes it addictive is the interaction between the user and the game itself. Unlike the usual monotonous cursor-aim-click-kill opponents or monsters type of game, you actually have to be focused and be involved in the game by jumping around and killing mobs while keeping a lookout on your HP and MP bar. There's also a guild system in MapleStory which ups its value to near that of World of Warcraft (WoW) and other MMORPGs. This game offers 4 different job classes: Warrior, Bowman (archer), Magician, and Thief. Each class has the same number of job advancements to be made upon reaching the required level, namely at Level 10: First Job Advancement; Level 30: Second Job Advancement; Level 70: Third Job Advancement,;Level 120: Fourth Job Advancement (this is usually where you are demi-god in MapleStory after maxing out your skills).

Story Line: There really is not much of a storyline in MapleStory despite their futile attempts to create one. You will accept quests along the way that will tell you bits and pieces of information which do make sense for awhile until you advance to the later stages of the game accept the other quests. Then you'll realize that most quests have their own individual plot and have little or no link to the others. Players will find themselves exploring the different areas in the game, leveling to get stronger in order to become a good samaritan that will save the weak and protect the good and like all good samaritans do in order make the world a better place.

Visuals/Sound: The graphics are practically one of the best that you can get in a free 2D online MMORPG game. It's pretty awesome and the characters are pretty cute, though the backdrops can be slightly pixilated despite being on high quality, giving it a canvas painting look. Skills animation wise I'd say they've done a pretty good job to make up for the lack of 3D graphics. Overall there aren't many flaws you in the graphic system unless you opt for the lower quality settings. Each map has its own unique background music and the tunes throughout the game are pleasant and in a way even catchy. Together with the sound animations of the different skills and spells you will not get bored if you travel to and train in new areas.

Combat: Combat in MapleStory is quite similar to Mario-kind-of-game-play. Basically because the entire game map is in 2D you move up, down, left, right, not around. You have platforms and ledges serve as stepping stones to move around the map. The layout of each map is different so there will be a combination of platforms, ladders, ropes, teleportation keys and hidden maps. First off, your character doesn't auto attack so you actually have to plan your skills and manage your attacks. Holding down the attack button doesn't work because after some time your character will just stop attacking (this is a move to stop botting). As explained, the different jobs have different combat skills such as ranged attacks and melee attacks. The only melee class would be the warrior and the sub class of thief, the bandit. Monsters in MapleStory are also interact with the players in the sense that they will deal damage to you the moment the bump into your character. Each mob has different skills and movement speeds. Some mobs are able to jump onto platforms so their movement routes in the map are not predictable. Spawning rates and the places at which the mobs spawn also vary. Adding up all these you will end up with a battle system that requires you to make use of tactics in order to overcome the various mobs you'll encounter.

Gameplay: Gameplay is pretty simple. The age group of people who play MapleStory covers quite a large range - from 8 year olds to married couples to parents. The ability to customize your own controls are a plus in MapleStory as well as it is one of the very few games which actually lets you customize 90% of the controls. Each time you gain a new skill, you can just open up the window to edit your controls in game and assign your skill to any selected key. This freedom given to players to change their controls on the fly also helps makes the gameplay less tedious. Please do not be surprised if you happen to meet real jerks at a constant rate because like all online games there are bound to be spoilers. On the whole, the gameplay here is pretty fun and innovative.

Leveling: The extent to which you have to train in order to level up in MapleStory will only start to rack up when you get to the higher levels in the game. This is because from needing 15 EXP to level up from 1 to 2, almost 2 million EXP is needed to level up from 69 to 70 and about 27 million EXP is required to level up from 119 to 120 and close to 2 billion EXP to level up from 199 to 200. This proves how impossible it is to do so. However, there are Party Quests (PQ) for all levels to help them pull through the harder leveling periods. At the moment these PQs are located at Kerning City PQ (level 21-30), Ludibrium PQ (level 35-50), Orbis PQ (level 51-70), Zakum Quest ( level 55< *note: no one goes to Zakum until level 100<), Guild PQ (level 10<), El Nath PQ (level 120<) and lastly Horntail PQ (level 80<, note: no one has completed this quest yet). Though these quests might take up more time, the rewards are great.

Hacking: Hacking in MapleStory was at its peak rate before they introduced the GameGuard Anti-Hacking program. Right now, there are still hacking programs that can bypass it but if you are caught in game using such illegal tools, the player will have his account stripped and banned for a certain period of time depending on the offence that he/she has committed. Besides hacking, there's actually a Law system in MapleStory that you have to follow. For example, no selling of A-cash, Mesos, No Vulgarities etc.

Cash: This is a totally free online game. No monthly fees or any form of payment is required. However they do have a Cash Shop from which players can purchase A-Cash to acquire additional equips, in-game items to beautify their character or aid them in their journey.

Summary: If you like MMORPGs and have a decent internet connection, then this is the game for you. You'll need a lot of patience to play this game because of the slow rate at which you'll level up at the higher levels. For people that are thinking that the characters look the same, they don't. There's a wide selection of armor to choose from, hence players have a choice of dressing up their character in their preferred style. Ultimately there's not much of a chance that you'll bump into a twin. When comparing MapleStory to games like Runescape or Neopets, MapleStory definitely wins hands down, a highly recommended game.

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