The Last of Us released in 2013 and when I saw it at E3, I got a PS3 just for this. Another fantastic game from Naughty Dog, whether it becomes a series of games I don't know, but I certainly hope.
The story takes place in 2013 where a mutant fungus starts to change people into infected zombie-types. After the prologue the game shoots twenty years ahead and we see the devastation the infection has had on the world. We play as Joel, brilliantly portrayed by Troy Baker as he tries to get Ellie, amazingly portrayed by Ashley Johnson, to a group called the Fireflies as they look for a cure. Ellie has a bite, but is immune to the infection, as she doesn't turn which happens quickly. There's a bunch of characters who pop up during the story, Tess, Bill and David stand out and are also fantastically voiced. Not everyone you meet is friendly, as well as the infected, the people are the ones to really fear.
The game is brutal, intense and very mature, it's video game that is definitely not for kids. Whether you're trying not to get spotted or hordes of enemies are after you, there's always potential danger wherever you go. The stealth is great and listen mode let's you see where the enemies are positioned, there's even stealth takedowns so you can try and thin the herd and stay quiet. The gunplay is difficult to get used to but it's good, they don't want you to feel safe even with guns and once you've alerted the enemies, you definitely aren't safe. As well as guns, you can fight with your fists and pummel the enemies if your ammo has depleted. You can also craft medkits, explosives, molotovs and more. You can even use melee weapons that will soon break if you find them. Granted this stuff isn't as common as you'd like, ammo and items are very scarce and it's always a celebration when you find some.
The cutscenes are beautiful to watch, these are some of the best graphics I've ever seen, you can see the emotion in their face and hear it in their performance. The characters are amazing and so is the development, we see both Ellie and Joel over the course of this game, which spans through all four seasons. It's a powerful game, emotional, intensity, fearful, so many feelings come out of this one. The wonderful music that fits perfectly is another stand out. It's a challenging game with five difficulties. The higher you play, the more scarce the items, you don't even have listen mode, Ellie can tell you where enemies are though and she can even pass you ammo if she finds it. The people you're with will also contribute to killing your attackers, rather than just idly watch you get your ass kicked.
Some of the best collectables I've seen, they're notes and messages from other people and they're really informative and can even give you combinations to safes and doors. The on the rails intro let's you see firsthand the world's demise to the infection as you drive through the streets. You have to plan your battles, once you're caught they will come at you, if you aren't prepared you're gonna have to use bricks and battles for distractions and use your bombs and ammo well, basically, don't shoot unless you'll definitely hit them, you'll regret firing so much if you miss. The sound work is brilliant, from Joel's loud sprinting footsteps to enemies distant voices as they walk around the area. Don't miss the optional conversations as they give you more insight to the world, all the dialogue is worth listening to, so make sure you keep your allies close to hear what they're saying. Ellie will even bust out some of her jokes if you keep an eye out during the quieter moments, the chemistry between the characters is entertaining to watch.
There's almost nothing wrong with this game. There's a decent multiplayer that is difficult to get used to but so rewarding when you manage to get the best of another player, but it just seems out of place, maybe they could've put in something else that would've been more beneficial to the game. Some of the overgrown vegetation looked awful when you went too close to it, 2D plants looked terrible, but it wasn't really an issue. A few texture glitches and environmental pop outs here and there, nothing too daunting.
This is without a doubt the best game I've ever played, and from experience I can justify buying a console for this game. Naughty Dog never fail to impress me and this time they blew it out of the park, I think it's impossible to give a game a perfect 10, but this is the closest I've ever been and probably will be, maybe The Last of Us sequel could be the first if it happens. Go buy this game, go borrow it off a buddy and if you don't play games, watch someone who does play it, it's better than most movies you'll ever see. This game is worth experiencing no matter if you're a gamer or not. Best. Game. Ever.
9.5/10
Sunday 27 November 2016
Sunday 20 November 2016
The Walking Dead: Michonne Telltale Series (Xbox One)
Telltale have certainly became a high profile developer over the past few years, with their episodic games based on popular TV shows and other games. One of their well know games, The Walking Dead series is my favourite and they decided to release the Michonne episodes to keep us anticipated for series three of The Walking Dead... or was it a cash in? That's been done before, releasing a Walking Dead game with popular characters.
Not much is known about Michonne in the TV show, other than she's a bad ass with a sword. This story follows Michonne before she appears in the show, it's cool to get more back story on a very closed character. Telltale's cartoony-comic graphics fit Walking Dead brilliantly and makes the comic come to life. One thing they do every game is make an interesting story and characters you care about. This makes you think about the choices you're given as Telltale's story changes based on what you pick, or so they say.
The Michonne series was only three episodes long, opposed to the five we usually get. Each episode felt short too, the story seemed to be over in a flash, I felt like there wasn't enough time for the characters to develop and how I felt about them. Some of the characters had potential, but three episodes wasn't long enough for them. The performances were brilliant as they always are, Michonne was perfectly portrayed. I tried to play like I thought she would act, trying not to get attached to anyone. It's always hard not to in Telltale games, but it seemed I was destined to make friend with certain characters and enemies of others.
The intro was fantastic, images of the comic appeared in the background as some cool music played. They definitely got their intros from Tales From the Borderlands. The story was really good and left me wishing they had more episodes in between so they could have built up the final battle more. The engine runs so much smoother with the recent games, there's a lot less stopping and starting, but it is still present.
Michonne had visions during the game, I felt they used these too much and they often went on too long. I wanted the game to take place more in the present and not in sequences that weren't real, the game was too short for them. My issues with Telltale games were still here too, I still felt like my choices didn't really matter and what happened would've happened either way, even if it just delayed something to a later episode. You still have to interact with the right object to trigger the rest of the story, this can lead to having to interact with a load of pointless objects in the hope it takes you further. I do love Telltale however and I'm always excited for their upcoming games and announcements.
This was just a miniseries that probably won't go any further. I'm just patiently waiting for season three of The Walking Dead and I hope making this didn't mean they delayed it, because this wasn't really necessary, but I did enjoy it still.
7.3/10
Not much is known about Michonne in the TV show, other than she's a bad ass with a sword. This story follows Michonne before she appears in the show, it's cool to get more back story on a very closed character. Telltale's cartoony-comic graphics fit Walking Dead brilliantly and makes the comic come to life. One thing they do every game is make an interesting story and characters you care about. This makes you think about the choices you're given as Telltale's story changes based on what you pick, or so they say.
The Michonne series was only three episodes long, opposed to the five we usually get. Each episode felt short too, the story seemed to be over in a flash, I felt like there wasn't enough time for the characters to develop and how I felt about them. Some of the characters had potential, but three episodes wasn't long enough for them. The performances were brilliant as they always are, Michonne was perfectly portrayed. I tried to play like I thought she would act, trying not to get attached to anyone. It's always hard not to in Telltale games, but it seemed I was destined to make friend with certain characters and enemies of others.
The intro was fantastic, images of the comic appeared in the background as some cool music played. They definitely got their intros from Tales From the Borderlands. The story was really good and left me wishing they had more episodes in between so they could have built up the final battle more. The engine runs so much smoother with the recent games, there's a lot less stopping and starting, but it is still present.
Michonne had visions during the game, I felt they used these too much and they often went on too long. I wanted the game to take place more in the present and not in sequences that weren't real, the game was too short for them. My issues with Telltale games were still here too, I still felt like my choices didn't really matter and what happened would've happened either way, even if it just delayed something to a later episode. You still have to interact with the right object to trigger the rest of the story, this can lead to having to interact with a load of pointless objects in the hope it takes you further. I do love Telltale however and I'm always excited for their upcoming games and announcements.
This was just a miniseries that probably won't go any further. I'm just patiently waiting for season three of The Walking Dead and I hope making this didn't mean they delayed it, because this wasn't really necessary, but I did enjoy it still.
7.3/10
Sunday 13 November 2016
Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception (PS3)
Uncharted 3 released in 2011 and was one of the first PS3 games I owned, I was pretty late to the PlayStation 3 party. I did however wait to play it after the first two of course. It was so great getting to play through the whole trilogy so soon after each other. I loved the previous games and this was no different, Naughty Dog are so consistent in creating games, it's frightening.
The intro was so great, a bar fight. Great camera work and improved combat made it so enjoyable to play and watch. All your favourites are back and we have a new friend, Charlie Cutter. Cutter was without a doubt my favourite character in the whole series and it's a shame how little he was in the game. The villains were pretty good and there was even a fisticuffs boss fight at the end which really suited this game. This is probably the most humorous game of the series, Cutter and the gangs dialogue works so well and they seem so real in their conversation. I found myself slowly playing the story so I could hear all the dialogue without accidentally triggering the rest of the story.
It looks stunning, the graphics are so much sharper. The beautiful scenery, the well designed levels and the cutscenes are fantastic to watch. The combat has improved, being able to break grabs and throw enemies back to get some more space. You can even hit the enemies with near by weapons, which act as a one hit kill. We also get to see how a you Nate and Sully meet, I loved it, it was a great chapter and I wished there was more to their back story. It's action packed, there's never a dull moment in this one, escaping a burning building, a capsizing boat, a horde of Killer spiders, chasing enemy vehicles on a horse, there's much more too.
The main villian was an interesting one, but I feel they were underused and the sub villain, who was quite bland starred far more. There was a dream sequence that was different, but it ending up going on too long. Grenade spam and bum rushing enemies made the hard difficulty just feel cheap rather than challenging. Enemy spawns also felt cheap as they would spawn behind me and I wouldn't know until they practically killed me. It was very difficult to leave hand to hand combat if you engaged it and there was another enemy shooting you, the only way I could leave it was if I was gunned down. While in cover, a grenade landed and I left cover and tried to roll away, but I was just put back in cover and blew up, rolling and cover were the same button so this happened frequently. I couldn't switch shoulders when shooting and thought they removed the feature, it turns out it was set to off which baffled me, it didn't make sense why it wasn't already on like the others. There weren't many glitches but one puzzle, a gear got stuck when I took it off the wall but it stayed on, so I had to restart it
This was a great installment to the series and it was great to see our favourite characters again and some new ones, I only wish there was more backstory and Cutter. I'm so glad the series didn't stop here and Uncharted 4 will surely be another wonderful addition to the series from Naughty Dog.
8.3/10
The intro was so great, a bar fight. Great camera work and improved combat made it so enjoyable to play and watch. All your favourites are back and we have a new friend, Charlie Cutter. Cutter was without a doubt my favourite character in the whole series and it's a shame how little he was in the game. The villains were pretty good and there was even a fisticuffs boss fight at the end which really suited this game. This is probably the most humorous game of the series, Cutter and the gangs dialogue works so well and they seem so real in their conversation. I found myself slowly playing the story so I could hear all the dialogue without accidentally triggering the rest of the story.
It looks stunning, the graphics are so much sharper. The beautiful scenery, the well designed levels and the cutscenes are fantastic to watch. The combat has improved, being able to break grabs and throw enemies back to get some more space. You can even hit the enemies with near by weapons, which act as a one hit kill. We also get to see how a you Nate and Sully meet, I loved it, it was a great chapter and I wished there was more to their back story. It's action packed, there's never a dull moment in this one, escaping a burning building, a capsizing boat, a horde of Killer spiders, chasing enemy vehicles on a horse, there's much more too.
The main villian was an interesting one, but I feel they were underused and the sub villain, who was quite bland starred far more. There was a dream sequence that was different, but it ending up going on too long. Grenade spam and bum rushing enemies made the hard difficulty just feel cheap rather than challenging. Enemy spawns also felt cheap as they would spawn behind me and I wouldn't know until they practically killed me. It was very difficult to leave hand to hand combat if you engaged it and there was another enemy shooting you, the only way I could leave it was if I was gunned down. While in cover, a grenade landed and I left cover and tried to roll away, but I was just put back in cover and blew up, rolling and cover were the same button so this happened frequently. I couldn't switch shoulders when shooting and thought they removed the feature, it turns out it was set to off which baffled me, it didn't make sense why it wasn't already on like the others. There weren't many glitches but one puzzle, a gear got stuck when I took it off the wall but it stayed on, so I had to restart it
This was a great installment to the series and it was great to see our favourite characters again and some new ones, I only wish there was more backstory and Cutter. I'm so glad the series didn't stop here and Uncharted 4 will surely be another wonderful addition to the series from Naughty Dog.
8.3/10
Sunday 6 November 2016
Mafia 3 (Xbox One)
Mafia 3, yes, this is apparently a Mafia game... Set in 1968, around twenty years after the events of Mafia 2, we are taken to New Bordeaux, heavily based on New Orleans. We take control of Lincoln Clay, a Vietnam veteran returning home after the war, very similar to Mafia 2s intro. The game is also set in the present during some cutscenes, they're shown as a documentary style about the things Clay had done, this was really cool and set the tone for the things that would occur. When the main menu shows and All Along the Watchtower plays, you're fooled into thinking "This is going to be amazing", from the start, you're built up for disappointment.
Clay is part of the Black Mob, after a tragedy occurs early on, he sets out for revenge on the Mafia after being saved by his friend, Father James and has help from John Donovan, a CIA handler, in tracking the mafia. During Clay's pursuit, he makes three friends, well, they're more acquaintances, they are underbosses who you can hand out districts to when you take over a territory. One of whom, is our old friend Vito Scaletta from Mafia 2. I was duped into thinking this was creating and building your own mafia, all we got is three uninteresting characters whining and bitching about how they want the territory. Your "mafia" is effectively three separate gangs temporarily working together to take over the city, Godfather 2 made you feel like you were building your own mafia, this didn't feel like a mob at all and it was so annoying listening to the gangs leaders moaning constantly.
The graphics are outstanding, the emotion in the cutscenes is perfect and the lip syncing is incredible. As well as the cutscenes being the best thing in the game, was the music, all you have to do is listen and you'll agree. The lighting looks really nice and the nights are pitch black and often difficult to see, but it looks realistic. However, sometimes the weather and lighting was off key, I could literally drive back and forth at one point and literally watch it change from day and night. A cool thing when driving, was there was a rear view mirror at the top, so you could always see behind even when driving forward. Unfortunately here, the view in the mirror looked awful, everything looked unrendered as you drove past, making the game look poor.
The gameplay was great, shooting, grenade throwing and switching cover all worked smoothly. The new stealth and takedowns were brilliant, you could play through the majority of the game in stealth if you chose to, but that was also a bad thing, it's a Mafia game so it shouldn't really have focused so much on the stealth, as good as it was. There was also the focus ability that let you see points of interest and enemies through walls, this was so useful and great to use, but again felt out of place in this game. Shooting from vehicles was a nice new feature that was missing from the previous game. The hard difficulty wasn't really challenging because the stealth was so good, I never really got in to many gun fights. I only died when I didn't play smart, not using cover and running out in the open.
There were side missions but they were boring and repetitive, but if you do a fair amount, you can find out what happened to Joe Barbaro from Mafia 2, a question that's been on all of our minds these past six years. You can feed bodies to crocodiles if they're near, this is a unique way of hiding bodies. Even the radio signal would get distorted in tunnels, the combat was different and easier than the brawls in the previous game. You get some decent perks from the underbosses, you can get an arms dealer, a car delivery and even a hit squad to help you out. The best moments of the game would be when a well known song would kick in during the story missions, they made the game feel alive and excited to play the upcoming mission. There's also a choice ending, but I won't say much more other than it's kind of got some replayability.
This may be a harsh section as I played it on release, but there were so many bugs. Most games have lots of bugs when they first release but I had so many, some were funny though. A car drove past with both front doors open, two police cars blew up and flew up really high, some cutscenes featured the same character twice, one was talking and moving and the other was still as a rock. I tried to take over a car and crashed into an invisible wall, it turns out it was just a lamppost that hadn't loaded yet. Waypoints wouldn't set, my brand new car wouldn't start and the game randomly shut down, but that was only once. Bugs for a brand new release however are inevitable, but I gotta mention them.
The game starts off so well but quickly deflates. It becomes repetitive as you do the same thing over and over before you get to do a story mission. The game was only interesting during the story, but we had to do repetitive tasks just to unlock more of the story. An issue I had with the story was you were given a name of a person to kill and why so you did. No character really had a part in the story until it was time to kill them, I felt like I was being told to kill instead of Clay wanting to for revenge. There was a police awareness bar that was practically pointless, I never once paid attention to it. During the whole game you don't get to change your clothes, once you see Clay, he wears the same outfit throughout. When I did a stealth takedown on a cop, it alerted all the cops despite me not being in their site. The hit squad was good but a lot of the time they would just show up and if I weren't already in combat, they would just leave without attacking anyone. The music was great but the radio would often repeat so I wouldn't get to hear the rest of the great songs on the soundtrack. The developers went the wrong way on this game, it's not a bad game, but it's not a Mafia game, it's a GTA clone. It suffered because of that, it should've been released under a different title because it didn't feel like a Mafia game in the slightest.
I loved Mafia 2, when 3 was announced I was so hyped and looking forward to it so much. It looks and plays great, but it's not a Mafia game. If that's the best they can do in six years, I'm disappointed. There was so much potential here and it shows, they just went the wrong way about executing it. I was under the impression I got to lead my own mafia, but what I got was three giant babies crying for their juice. This could have potentially been 9/10 had they not made a GTA clone, I'd love a Mafia 4 done right.
7.5/10
Clay is part of the Black Mob, after a tragedy occurs early on, he sets out for revenge on the Mafia after being saved by his friend, Father James and has help from John Donovan, a CIA handler, in tracking the mafia. During Clay's pursuit, he makes three friends, well, they're more acquaintances, they are underbosses who you can hand out districts to when you take over a territory. One of whom, is our old friend Vito Scaletta from Mafia 2. I was duped into thinking this was creating and building your own mafia, all we got is three uninteresting characters whining and bitching about how they want the territory. Your "mafia" is effectively three separate gangs temporarily working together to take over the city, Godfather 2 made you feel like you were building your own mafia, this didn't feel like a mob at all and it was so annoying listening to the gangs leaders moaning constantly.
The graphics are outstanding, the emotion in the cutscenes is perfect and the lip syncing is incredible. As well as the cutscenes being the best thing in the game, was the music, all you have to do is listen and you'll agree. The lighting looks really nice and the nights are pitch black and often difficult to see, but it looks realistic. However, sometimes the weather and lighting was off key, I could literally drive back and forth at one point and literally watch it change from day and night. A cool thing when driving, was there was a rear view mirror at the top, so you could always see behind even when driving forward. Unfortunately here, the view in the mirror looked awful, everything looked unrendered as you drove past, making the game look poor.
The gameplay was great, shooting, grenade throwing and switching cover all worked smoothly. The new stealth and takedowns were brilliant, you could play through the majority of the game in stealth if you chose to, but that was also a bad thing, it's a Mafia game so it shouldn't really have focused so much on the stealth, as good as it was. There was also the focus ability that let you see points of interest and enemies through walls, this was so useful and great to use, but again felt out of place in this game. Shooting from vehicles was a nice new feature that was missing from the previous game. The hard difficulty wasn't really challenging because the stealth was so good, I never really got in to many gun fights. I only died when I didn't play smart, not using cover and running out in the open.
There were side missions but they were boring and repetitive, but if you do a fair amount, you can find out what happened to Joe Barbaro from Mafia 2, a question that's been on all of our minds these past six years. You can feed bodies to crocodiles if they're near, this is a unique way of hiding bodies. Even the radio signal would get distorted in tunnels, the combat was different and easier than the brawls in the previous game. You get some decent perks from the underbosses, you can get an arms dealer, a car delivery and even a hit squad to help you out. The best moments of the game would be when a well known song would kick in during the story missions, they made the game feel alive and excited to play the upcoming mission. There's also a choice ending, but I won't say much more other than it's kind of got some replayability.
This may be a harsh section as I played it on release, but there were so many bugs. Most games have lots of bugs when they first release but I had so many, some were funny though. A car drove past with both front doors open, two police cars blew up and flew up really high, some cutscenes featured the same character twice, one was talking and moving and the other was still as a rock. I tried to take over a car and crashed into an invisible wall, it turns out it was just a lamppost that hadn't loaded yet. Waypoints wouldn't set, my brand new car wouldn't start and the game randomly shut down, but that was only once. Bugs for a brand new release however are inevitable, but I gotta mention them.
The game starts off so well but quickly deflates. It becomes repetitive as you do the same thing over and over before you get to do a story mission. The game was only interesting during the story, but we had to do repetitive tasks just to unlock more of the story. An issue I had with the story was you were given a name of a person to kill and why so you did. No character really had a part in the story until it was time to kill them, I felt like I was being told to kill instead of Clay wanting to for revenge. There was a police awareness bar that was practically pointless, I never once paid attention to it. During the whole game you don't get to change your clothes, once you see Clay, he wears the same outfit throughout. When I did a stealth takedown on a cop, it alerted all the cops despite me not being in their site. The hit squad was good but a lot of the time they would just show up and if I weren't already in combat, they would just leave without attacking anyone. The music was great but the radio would often repeat so I wouldn't get to hear the rest of the great songs on the soundtrack. The developers went the wrong way on this game, it's not a bad game, but it's not a Mafia game, it's a GTA clone. It suffered because of that, it should've been released under a different title because it didn't feel like a Mafia game in the slightest.
I loved Mafia 2, when 3 was announced I was so hyped and looking forward to it so much. It looks and plays great, but it's not a Mafia game. If that's the best they can do in six years, I'm disappointed. There was so much potential here and it shows, they just went the wrong way about executing it. I was under the impression I got to lead my own mafia, but what I got was three giant babies crying for their juice. This could have potentially been 9/10 had they not made a GTA clone, I'd love a Mafia 4 done right.
7.5/10
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