MIDDLE-EARTH’S LEADING GAMING, COMPUTER & TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE VOL 15 ISSUE 8 PC / PLAYSTATION / XBOX / NINTENDO LEGO The Lord of the Rings It’s Middle-earth in LEGO – all of it. FEATURES rAge report back COD: Black Ops II multiplayer one ring to rule them all SPECIAL EDITION Cover 1 of 4 - Gandalf & Frodo MIDDLE-EARTH’S LEADING GAMING, COMPUTER & TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE VOL 15 ISSUE 8 PC / PLAYSTATION / XBOX / NINTENDO LEGO FEATURES The Lord rAge report back of the Rings COD: Black Ops II multiplayer It’s Middle-earth in LEGO – all of it. one ring to find them SPECIAL EDITION Cover 2 of 4 - Aragorn & Pippin MIDDLE-EARTH’S LEADING GAMING, COMPUTER & TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE VOL 15 ISSUE 8 PC / PLAYSTATION / XBOX / NINTENDO LEGO The Lord of the Rings It’s Middle-earth in LEGO – all of it. FEATURES rAge report back COD: Black Ops II multiplayer one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them SPECIAL EDITION Cover 3 of 4 - Legolas & Gimli MIDDLE-EARTH’S LEADING GAMING, COMPUTER & TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE VOL 15 ISSUE 8 in the land of mordor where the shadows lie. SPECIAL EDITION PC / PLAYSTATION / XBOX / NINTENDO Cover 4 of 4 - Mordor FEATURES LEGO rAge report back COD: Black Ops II The Lord multiplayer of the Rings It’s Middle-earth in LEGO – all of it. Editor Michael “RedTide“ James [email protected] Assistant editor Geoff “GeometriX“ Burrows Staff writer Contents Dane “Barkskin “ Remendes Contributing editor Regulars Lauren “Guardi3n “ Das Neves 12 Ed’s Note 14 Inbox Features Technical writer Neo “ShockG“ Sibeko 18 Bytes 53 home_coded 32 RAGE 2012: BEAUTIFUL CHAOS International correspondent 72 Everything else When the country’s biggest and best gaming Miktar “Miktar” Dracon extravaganza comes to a close, it’s only natural to feel profound panic and despair at the thought of having Contributors to wait a whole year for the next one. But instead Rodain “Nandrew” Joubert Opinion of getting bogged down in the wait ahead, we’re Walt “Ramjet” Pretorius 18 I, Gamer playing optimist, thinking of the good times rAge 2012 Miklós “Mikit0707 “ Szecsei 20 The Game Stalker contained. Pippa “UnexpectedGirl” Tshabalala 22 The Indie Investigator Tarryn “Azimuth “ Van Der Byl 24 Miktar’s Meanderings Adam “Madman” Liebman 77 Hardwired 38 CALL OF DUTY: BLACK OPS II We stare long and hard into the unblinking eyes Art director 98 Game Over of Black Ops II’s revitalised multiplayer suite, and Chris “SAVAGE“ Savides discover how Treyarch plans to make this the most Photography attractive COD multiplayer off ering yet. Chris “SAVAGE“ Savides Preview Dreamstime.com 50 Company of Heroes 2 44 LEGO THE LORD OF THE RINGS Fotolia.com A LEGO The Lord of the Rings feature is never late, Sales executives dear reader. Nor is it early. It arrives precisely when it Cheryl “Cleona“ Harris / [email protected] Reviews means to. Does that quote work? +27 72 322 9875 52 Reviews: Introduction 80 MSI MOA 2012 Martin Green 53 Mini review: Kingdom Taipei, Taiwan played host to MSI’s Master Overclocking 083 445 0371 Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Arena this yearyear,, and we travelled all the way there to [email protected] Distance cover everyevery aspect of the prestiprestigiousgious event. 54 XCOM: Enemy Unknownnown Marketing and promotions manager 58 Torchlight II Jacqui “Jax” Jacobs 60 F1 2012 [email protected] 62 PES 2013 +27 82 778 8439 64 FIFA 2013 66 Tekken Tag Tournamentment 2 Offi ce assistant 68 Dead or Alive 5 Paul Ndebele 69 The Sims 3: Supernaturalatural Contact details 70 Rocksmith P .O. Box 237, Olivedale, 2158, South Africa 71 Port Royale 3: Pirateses & Tel +27 11 704 2679 Merchants Fax +27 11 704 4120 Subscription department [email protected] Hardware Internet 74 Tech News www.nag.co.za 76 Dream Machine www.zinio.com/nag 78 Lazy Gamer’s Guide:: Tt eSportseSports www.facebook.com/NAGMagazine Level 10M Gaming MouseMouse www.twitter.com/nagcoza 84 AMD A10 5800K APUU Printing 86 CM Storm Recon / CreativeCreative Impress Web Printers Labs Sound Blaster Recon3DRecon3D 031 263 2755 Omega 88 PATRIOT Intel Extrememe MastersMasters Distribution 2133MHz Dual Channelnnel Kit On the Dot Tt eSports MEKA G-UnitUnit Stuart Dickerson / 011 401 5932 Mechanical Keyboard90rd90 ASUS GTX660 Ti-DC2T-2GD5C2T-2GD5 Copyright 2012 NAG 90 Corsair Neutron Serieses All rights reserved. No article or picture in this magazine may 240GB SSDs be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form whatsoever without the express written consent of the publisher. Opinions 92 CM Storm Sonuz Gamingaming Head expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of set the publisher or the editors. All trademarks and registered trademarks are the sole property of their respective owners. 94 GIGABYTE Z77X-UP77 Don’t Pirate NAG! 96 MSI GTX 650Ti Powerer EditionEdition this magazine when you’re fi nished with it. 97 Thermaltake Water 2.02.0 PROPRO 10 November 2012 www.nag.co.za / EDITOR’S NOTE / rAge 2012 There’s a press release on the offi cial site: www.rageexpo. co.za, and an article in this issue to tell you everything you need to know about what happened… offi cially. I’m going to tell you what really happened. Everything in the press release and article is all true; it was a great show and we had more people than ever before but it also taught us a few lessons (as it always does). First up it was too busy on Saturday. It got so bad at one point that the Dome safety and security people had to stop people from coming in until people let. This crisis lasted about 45 minutes and a few people got grumpy and said organisation was bad. I disagree: bad organisation would have been people getting hurt because we didn’t have good organisation. The lines to get in were also a bit long and of course we had a heat wave. Standing in the sun isn’t fun. The ATM machines were also too busy and at one point weren’t working due to some outside link problem that was resolved eventually. The credit card machines that used wireless were a bit of a joke because over the rAge weekend wireless at the Dome doesn’t exist – there are just too many signals fl ying around for anything to work. The stage area was too crowded. As for the LAN, some internet link to Europe went down on Friday (we think a great white ate the cable), resulting in zero connectivity on Friday; the network wasn’t 100% perfect WWW.PROPHECY.CO.ZA thanks to the truck strike so some of our expensive kit was I ordered some stuff from these guys the other week and was stranded in customs, and apparently some games didn’t like running late to collect it (I was going to be there at about 20 the confi guration. It was our tenth year – you think things minutes after their closing time). “No problem,” I was told. would run smoothly. LOL… End of the day it all worked out “We’ll wait for you.” They didn’t know who I was either. So and I’d say around 99% of the people are happy people. Sorry thanks guys, you’ve earned your free plug here. to the 1%; I wish everything ran perfectly but I guess because it’s year 10 we were due for a bit of a wakeup call – more of a COMPETITION WINNERS friendly reminder not to be complacent and to respect our Sorry for this boring stuff , I don’t know why all these wieners position at the top. Here are some of the things we’re doing are being put on this page. I feel like I’m not in charge of for 2013 to improve on this year: We’re going to have the NAG this magazine sometimes. Next month this goes in the news LAN 100% sorted out and confi rmed to work by 1 June 2013 or section or not at all. Anyway – well done all you people – your we’re not going to have the LAN at rAge. We’re talking to the skill at sending an SMS has been rewarded. Borderlands various ISPs about a new Internet system that will work just 2 competition winners: main winner – Bryan Banfi eld, like it does if you were connecting from home (not as quick second place winners – Duncan Smith; Johan Dreyer; JP but more or less). We’re going to add more people in the front Steyn and the rest – Nathan Stewart; Christopher Doran; to deal with the lines of people quickly but please consider Richard Steyn; Jason Rip; Ruben Janse Van Ransburg; JL coming on Sunday or Friday (the less busy days). We’re adding Hendrikse. The guy with some actual skill is Keith Milton of more ATM machines (maybe those portable ones outside). Roodepoort who won the arcade machine at the NAG stand We’re going to insist that all retailers use hard lines for their at rAge by playing Ghosts and Goblins with a score of 154,600 credit card machines. We’re going to increase the size of (he clocked it twice). Oh, just been sent more: September the aisles (by 2 meters on the main ones and 1 meter on the Evetech competition – Louis Ainslie; Johan Mackay; Lumart secondary). We’re going to move the stage around and add Wiechers; Brendon Morris; Stefan Engelbrecht. more seats (1-2 more bleachers) and more standing room. All Before I go, we’ve brought back a favourite section – this has already been decided and that’s before we’ve even Everything Else – this is all that stuff you love and surround had out fi rst meeting for rAge 2013.