Welcome to my end of year review. I played a bunch of games throughout the year and I thought I'd sum it all up with the games I played during the year. I'm only going to talk about the games I played through for the first time, so unfortunately I won't be able to praise The Last of Us some more. Some games I played for the first time this year, I played in the earlier months before I started my reviews, so they will get their own section. Onto it then.
Best game I played in 2016: Sunset Overdrive
Runners up: Portal 2 and Batman a Telltale Series
This may be a surprise as the review isn't out yet, same with Batman. These reviews will be out in the coming weeks, so you'll be able to read more in depth about both. Sunset Overdrive was an incredible game, so unique and fun. Insomniac did an amazing job with this one and packed this game with content. I'll admit I wasn't a fan at first, I didn't like the combat as much, if you weren't jumping and grinding, you were playing the game wrong. I had to suck it up and adapt to how you were meant to play, once I did, I was hooked. I love the cartoony, but fantastic graphics. The hilarious dialogue and voice acting, the vast customization. The huge arsenal of unique weapons. I loved this game and Insomniac has left me desperate for more.
Worst game I played in 2016; Saw the Video Game
Runners up: Medal of Honor Warfighter, Sniper Ghost Warrior
The sad thing is about Saw, was that it could've been a decent game. The combat ruined this game, the fact that sometimes I just couldn't attack despite button mashing the attack buttons proved how bad it was. If it had not been for the easy achievements, I honestly wouldn't have bothered to finish it. The story was interesting, but the gameplay was so poor, I just lost interest. The puzzles and the traps were pretty good, but the unappealing graphics and crappy gameplay was enough to cement itself as the worst of the year.
Most disappointing game of 2016: Mafia 3
Runners up: Quantum Break, Homefront
It keeps me up at night how disapointed I was with Mafia. I was looking forward to it so much and yes, I did give it a pretty good score, but this should've been 8.5 at least. It simply just wasn't a Mafia game, they just used the Mafia name to help it sell. Please tell me were the Mafia part was, this was just a revenge story with brilliant graphics and good voice acting. The gameplay and stealth were good too, but the repetitive nature of it killed it. I just couldn't wait for it to end, I was so bored of doing the same mission in a different area over and over. It's a damn shame and I hope Mafia 4 will rectify this.
Biggest surprise of 2016: The Amazing Spider-Man
Runners up: Mars War Logs, Shadows of the Damned
I'm a sucker for a Spider-Man game, I didn't expect much from this one though. Movie games are often lacklustre, and a movie-game of a pretty average movie meant all hope was lost, but I enjoyed it. The graphics were poor and the acting was cheesy, but there was lots to do. I loved the web swinging animations and the spider suit looked great. Even the combat was pretty good, it was a shoddy version of the Batman Arkham combat, but that's so good, even a shoddy one is decent. I'm going as far to say that my most anticipated game to play of 2017 is The Amazing Spider-Man 2, that's how excited I am to play the sequel, and I'm going to play some awesome looking games next year.
So, the games I played at the start of the year, before I started reviews. I plan to review these games in the future, but I'm going to give a mini review on each. One or two I didn't feel the need to review and are included here too.
Torchlight (Xbox 360)
Honestly, this just wasn't my sort of game. I don't plan to give it a full review because I think it would be harsh. I just rushed through it and button mashed and spammed all my magic powers to kill the enemies. I skipped all the dialogue and didn't bother to explore the vast variety of weapons, armor, quests, abilities and enchantments. I feel this is a game people would get into, but it just wasn't for me.
Star Wars Battlefront (Xbox One)
EA have ruined this once great franchise. Graphics and sound are amazing, but everything else is dog shit. Fuck you EA, you money-grabbing, game-ruining, trash-polluting pricks. All you had to do was remake Star Wars Battlefront 2, it's one of the best games ever made. No single-player? Of course you fucked it up. I preordered this shambles and it's one of my biggest regrets. I only played three games the day it arrived and the third match crashed. I was so bored that I didn't even care it crashed and used it as an excuse to quit the game.
Dead Space (Xbox 360)
Brilliant. Terrifying. Absolutely loved it. Gameplay is fantastic, unique weapons, great boss fights, heart pounding chases. I first played it in 2008, it took me 8 years to get the guts to finally finish it. Truly a great survival horror. The fact that an enemy could literally pop out at any moment, had me on edge throughout. The Necromorphs are disgustingly scary, the only way to kill them was to shoot their limbs, I made sure to shoot every one because the sight of seeing them crawl after you was enough to keep me up at night. I'll never forget that opening scene, where you are chased by one, you don't even see it, but my God, do you not want to turn around and look for yourself.
Escape Dead Island (Xbox 360)
This was so shite. I don't know why there are so many Dead Island games, they're yet to make a good one. I'll admit that the gimmicky cartoon graphics were the best thing, but the awful acting and constant back and forth makes me question why they even bothered. Being able to stealth kill the zombies was pretty cool and it was actually pretty challenging, but the end boss fight went on far too long and the guy I played as, I absolutely hated. I think a game immediately fails when they can't make the protagonist likeable. But, it's like they didn't even try with this guy. He was literally a douchebag.
Duke Nukem Forever (Xbox 360)
10 years? For this? Are you fucking joking? Outdated. Simply put, Duke is not made for modern gaming. The sexualisation was ridiculous. Alien boobs that you can slap? Picking up literal shit? That sums up the crassness of this. It took me five years to complete, the thought of going back to it was tough. The unfair boss fights, the everlasting levels, the ridiculously long loading that makes Fallout look quick. If this is the best they can do in ten years, they should be shut down. Honestly don't know how this didn't just get cancelled.
Lost: Via Domus (Xbox 360)
Don't like the show, hate the game. It's pretty obvious I just played for the easy achievements. Let's just say that Lost is lucky I didn't review the game, as it would most definitely of rivalled Saw for the worst game. And the guy we played as was a fucking snake, don't make me play as terrible characters, who are dirty little rats.
2016 was full of gaming, it was great to go back and finish games I started years ago and play some great games that were more recent too. I plan to write even more reviews in 2017, but will anything ever beat The Last of Us at 9.5/10? With Days Gone, Red Dead Redemption 2 and of course, The Last of Us Part 2 all to come, it may just be possible!
Happy 2017.
Saturday 31 December 2016
Tuesday 27 December 2016
Gears of War 2 (Xbox 360)
The sequel to the Xbox exclusive series released in 2008 and I picked this up in Asda for a bargain of £5. We're again treated to a wonderful coop experience with the duo of Marcus and Dom (again I wanted to play as Dom).
Continuing the fight against the Locust and their Queen (who looks like a human for some reason). They are attempting to sink cities with a giant worm... yep, a giant worm, it's fucking huge! With this, we get to meet a bunch of new character. Dizzy, Tai and Ben Carmine are three specifically new and interesting characters. Ben may sound familiar as he's the brother of Anthony Carmine who featured in the previous game. Ben gets a lot more game time and he's a rookie and is learning the ropes with Delta squad.
With the stellar gameplay we already had, we get some great new features on top of it. Chainsaw battles are probably my favourite, your defence is tapping B as fast as you can to win it. It means you now get a chance instead of an instant death when a Locust sneaks up on you and chainsaws you. Being able to pick up Maulers shields gives you a lot of protection and you can move around with them. You are limited to your pistol though. You can also grab downed enemies and use them as a meat shield, if they get shot a lot they'll become as useless piece of cover. You get to use loads of new weapons too, like ink grenades, mortars and flamethrowers.
The multiplayer is great, I had a lot of fun on it when it was populated, sadly it's not as much anymore. There's a tonne of game modes to choose from and play with your friends. The ranking now makes sense to me, as you have an experience bar. Easily the best addition is horde mode. 50 waves of Locust coming at you with a total of five players, your choice of map and character, features all standard enemy types. It's pretty great.
Again, I played on insane in coop with a friend. The insane difficulty is much better than it was previously. The enemies don't just sponge and take a thousand bullets to kill anymore. It was so much more fun and wasn't a drag in parts. One part, where you had to kill a brumak and you were split up, we killed it and the cutscene started playing and during it, it said we failed despite killing it and the progression cutscene playing. Other than that, the rest was quite fun. Although the final boss was ridiculously easy, even on insane. The acting was fantastic, particularly a scene between Marcus and Dom, it showed how good these guys really are.
I faced a bunch of glitches while playing this again, but nothing major really. Walking on air as a grinder with a minigun appeared, was really fun on insane with no cover. I felt the game felt too similar to the first in the areas we where. There were way too many on the rail sections, they are something I'll never enjoy, but Gears seems to pump them in.
I loved the new enemies and the new weapons. The gameplay was again brilliant and felt looser. The characters and story were great. The campaign overall I didn't think was as good, Dom was pretty whiny, understandably of course and the boss fights were no comparison to the first. They did carry this game onwards brilliantly though and horde was a very fun addition to an already great multiplayer.
8.3/10
Continuing the fight against the Locust and their Queen (who looks like a human for some reason). They are attempting to sink cities with a giant worm... yep, a giant worm, it's fucking huge! With this, we get to meet a bunch of new character. Dizzy, Tai and Ben Carmine are three specifically new and interesting characters. Ben may sound familiar as he's the brother of Anthony Carmine who featured in the previous game. Ben gets a lot more game time and he's a rookie and is learning the ropes with Delta squad.
With the stellar gameplay we already had, we get some great new features on top of it. Chainsaw battles are probably my favourite, your defence is tapping B as fast as you can to win it. It means you now get a chance instead of an instant death when a Locust sneaks up on you and chainsaws you. Being able to pick up Maulers shields gives you a lot of protection and you can move around with them. You are limited to your pistol though. You can also grab downed enemies and use them as a meat shield, if they get shot a lot they'll become as useless piece of cover. You get to use loads of new weapons too, like ink grenades, mortars and flamethrowers.
The multiplayer is great, I had a lot of fun on it when it was populated, sadly it's not as much anymore. There's a tonne of game modes to choose from and play with your friends. The ranking now makes sense to me, as you have an experience bar. Easily the best addition is horde mode. 50 waves of Locust coming at you with a total of five players, your choice of map and character, features all standard enemy types. It's pretty great.
Again, I played on insane in coop with a friend. The insane difficulty is much better than it was previously. The enemies don't just sponge and take a thousand bullets to kill anymore. It was so much more fun and wasn't a drag in parts. One part, where you had to kill a brumak and you were split up, we killed it and the cutscene started playing and during it, it said we failed despite killing it and the progression cutscene playing. Other than that, the rest was quite fun. Although the final boss was ridiculously easy, even on insane. The acting was fantastic, particularly a scene between Marcus and Dom, it showed how good these guys really are.
I faced a bunch of glitches while playing this again, but nothing major really. Walking on air as a grinder with a minigun appeared, was really fun on insane with no cover. I felt the game felt too similar to the first in the areas we where. There were way too many on the rail sections, they are something I'll never enjoy, but Gears seems to pump them in.
I loved the new enemies and the new weapons. The gameplay was again brilliant and felt looser. The characters and story were great. The campaign overall I didn't think was as good, Dom was pretty whiny, understandably of course and the boss fights were no comparison to the first. They did carry this game onwards brilliantly though and horde was a very fun addition to an already great multiplayer.
8.3/10
Thursday 22 December 2016
Styx: Master of Shadows (Xbox One)
Styx released in 2014 and was a super quiet release. Had it not been for an Xbox Live sale, I wouldn't have noticed this game until it entered the Games With Gold program. It's a prequel to Of Orcs and Men, another game I know nothing about or managed to get to play. It's a stealth game, so I had to give it my money.
We play as Styx, a master thief, who's also a little green goblin. He has abilities to create clones, turn invisible and use amber vision, which highlights enemies and items. Super handy tools when it comes to stealthing through the tower of Arkanash. The tower is seemingly built in the sky, it's so high up and it has an infinite drop that descends in to grey clouds. It's a great place to dispose of bodies when you're near the edge, can't be leaving bodies around unless you want to get detected.
The opening cutscene is beautiful, it looks great. But that's it, from then one we're giving stills with dialogue, but they were nicely presented at least. The graphics are OK, not great like, the voice acting isn't the best either, but the performances were funny, I liked them. Being able to distinguish torches or with balls of sand from afar was a great way of creating cover and I did it as much as I could, enemies would light torches back up if they were near when they went out. You have a tattoo on your back that lights up when you're unlikely to get detected, this was a huge help in knowing whether you were safe.
There was a lot of ways to stay stealthy too, you could land on carpets from drops to cover the sound. You could hide bodies in boxes and even make them disappear completely using acid. Using your special abilities comes at a price, you need amber, which is a potion that can crop up through your missions. Each power takes down your amber bar until you replenish it. You could also do quiet kills, if you snuck up on an enemy, you could do a quick kill that or would make a lot of noise or do a silent kill which took longer.
There weren't a lot of missions but, each one was split into a few parts. This really broke up the missions and didn't make them feel like they dragged. The loads times were ridiculously long and were a huge reason why it took me so long to properly start playing. There was no non lethal option, which meant you killed everyone you got rid of, there was no way to knock an enemy out. The lip syncing was so bad it was like they didn't even really try. The combat was not the best, as you had to keep parrying their attacks until you got to strike with a deadly blow, this was there to encourage stealth.
I hated the platforming, sometimes it would work perfectly and the next you'd fall to your death because he wouldn't grab a ledge. It got to the point where I saved after every jump, I didn't trust the platforming one bit. Another annoyance was that Styx would automatically vault over a railing when you jumped across, he would never just hang on the ledge, this lead to me getting caught often when an enemy was on patrol as I always expected him to just hang there. There were insects too that would attack if they heard you as they were blind, but they didn't attack humans which made no sense, I tried more than once to get them close to each other so they'd fight, but it never happened.
The story was interesting, but I then struggled to keep up with it. At parts I just didn't know what was happening. If any enemy was investigating when they thought they saw you, you couldn't leave the area until they stopped looking, I thought this was dumb, as you should be able to finish the zone even if someone is looking, I mean why would you not proceed just because someone's looking for you? I was hiding behind an open door as a guard was patrolling and when he got close he somehow managed to spot me through the door and wall, there was no possible way for him to see me. On one mission you don't have your dagger and because of that you can't kill anyone during the mission, but it didn't make sense because Styx snaps there neck in the silent kill and doesn't use his dagger, it just made the mission so much more difficult. The finale was so disapointing that I'm not even gonna say anymore than that.
Styx was a good stealth game overall, it did have some problems but I enjoyed it. With a sequel confirmed, I'll be purchasing it, hopefully some tweaks to the problems I faced and some new additions could make it a great game. After this I'd like to go back and play the prequel.
6.8/10
We play as Styx, a master thief, who's also a little green goblin. He has abilities to create clones, turn invisible and use amber vision, which highlights enemies and items. Super handy tools when it comes to stealthing through the tower of Arkanash. The tower is seemingly built in the sky, it's so high up and it has an infinite drop that descends in to grey clouds. It's a great place to dispose of bodies when you're near the edge, can't be leaving bodies around unless you want to get detected.
The opening cutscene is beautiful, it looks great. But that's it, from then one we're giving stills with dialogue, but they were nicely presented at least. The graphics are OK, not great like, the voice acting isn't the best either, but the performances were funny, I liked them. Being able to distinguish torches or with balls of sand from afar was a great way of creating cover and I did it as much as I could, enemies would light torches back up if they were near when they went out. You have a tattoo on your back that lights up when you're unlikely to get detected, this was a huge help in knowing whether you were safe.
There was a lot of ways to stay stealthy too, you could land on carpets from drops to cover the sound. You could hide bodies in boxes and even make them disappear completely using acid. Using your special abilities comes at a price, you need amber, which is a potion that can crop up through your missions. Each power takes down your amber bar until you replenish it. You could also do quiet kills, if you snuck up on an enemy, you could do a quick kill that or would make a lot of noise or do a silent kill which took longer.
There weren't a lot of missions but, each one was split into a few parts. This really broke up the missions and didn't make them feel like they dragged. The loads times were ridiculously long and were a huge reason why it took me so long to properly start playing. There was no non lethal option, which meant you killed everyone you got rid of, there was no way to knock an enemy out. The lip syncing was so bad it was like they didn't even really try. The combat was not the best, as you had to keep parrying their attacks until you got to strike with a deadly blow, this was there to encourage stealth.
I hated the platforming, sometimes it would work perfectly and the next you'd fall to your death because he wouldn't grab a ledge. It got to the point where I saved after every jump, I didn't trust the platforming one bit. Another annoyance was that Styx would automatically vault over a railing when you jumped across, he would never just hang on the ledge, this lead to me getting caught often when an enemy was on patrol as I always expected him to just hang there. There were insects too that would attack if they heard you as they were blind, but they didn't attack humans which made no sense, I tried more than once to get them close to each other so they'd fight, but it never happened.
The story was interesting, but I then struggled to keep up with it. At parts I just didn't know what was happening. If any enemy was investigating when they thought they saw you, you couldn't leave the area until they stopped looking, I thought this was dumb, as you should be able to finish the zone even if someone is looking, I mean why would you not proceed just because someone's looking for you? I was hiding behind an open door as a guard was patrolling and when he got close he somehow managed to spot me through the door and wall, there was no possible way for him to see me. On one mission you don't have your dagger and because of that you can't kill anyone during the mission, but it didn't make sense because Styx snaps there neck in the silent kill and doesn't use his dagger, it just made the mission so much more difficult. The finale was so disapointing that I'm not even gonna say anymore than that.
Styx was a good stealth game overall, it did have some problems but I enjoyed it. With a sequel confirmed, I'll be purchasing it, hopefully some tweaks to the problems I faced and some new additions could make it a great game. After this I'd like to go back and play the prequel.
6.8/10
Sunday 18 December 2016
Quantum Break (Xbox One)
Quantum Break developed by Remedy, released in 2016. When I saw the gameplay trailer for this at E3, I genuinely thought this was going to be one of the best games to hit the Xbox One. Sadly that wasn't the case. The game even suffered a delay, I'd hate to have seem what it would've been like, had it released on schedule. As well as the game, we have a TV show, five episodes long that plays in between the chapters of the game. It features the cast of the game and some people appear a lot more in the show than the game.
We play as Jack Joyce, better known as Shawn Ashmore who played Iceman in the Xmen film series. After a disastrous time machine experiment fails, Jack is gifted powers that allows him to manipulate time. Time fractures and will soon break if Jack is unable to fix the fracture. Jack's brother, Will, played by Dominic Monaghan, better known as Merry Brandybuck from Lord of the Rings, built the time machine. Jack's friend, Paul, played by Aidan Gillen better known as Little Finger from Game of Thrones, expands on Will's time machine and asks Jack to be there for a demonstration. When it fails, both Jack and Paul are gifted time powers. Paul believes time can't be fixed, leading the two time powered friends to now become enemies.
The story is really short, five chapters long that can easily be done in a few hours, the TV episodes are full twenty minute segments, though I enjoyed watching them, I could see how they could frustrate a player who just wanted to play the game. Some people featured heavily in the show, but practically didn't feature in the game, this was stupid because it felt like the game and show were following different people that just linked up, rather than following one story.
The cast is great, I knew most of them and they gave brilliant performances. Even the people I didn't know gave a great performance. The graphics are fantastic and the life-like appearances are scarily good. It's far too linear though, it doesn't feel like you're allowed to do anything except the story, it just felt so restricted. There's parts where you get to play as Paul, which I thought was really cool, but all you do is walk to an area, where you then get to make a choice that affected the story. I didn't understand why I got to make a decision as the bad guy, when I played as the good guy. I also felt that the choices weren't really that important, it all leads to the same ending, is that really giving you a choice?
You get some cool powers though. You can get a time sheild, time stop is a blast, which freezes an enemy and then let's you shoot bullets towards him and when it unfreezes, the bullets hit. There's time rush, which allows you to run in a slowed down world, you can takedown an enemy or run from falling debris with this. Time vision allows you to see enemies through wall, looks like heat vision. Time dodge allows you to quickly move away from enemies and their gunfire. What was really disapointing was that there was no power that completed stopped time, only when a time fracture occurred that happened. Even Timeshift let you freeze time. Jack was a just a normal guy, next he's some expert marksman? They should have let you briefly stop time and than be able to steal the enemies weapons or even subdue them when they were frozen. There should be some sort of stealth, freeze time and then sneak past the enemies, this would've fitted so much better I think.
The gun play is far from the best, but this is the only time when it really feels like a game, when you in action using your powers and guns. The platforming is really average and clunky, and the time fractures are a pain trying to get through some sequence. It's a cover-shooter that has no cover system! Jack sort of crouches behind things, but you can't move around in cover and you can't blind fire, I didn't enjoy the gun fights much at all. Something cool though, was when you killed the last enemy in the area, it did a slow motion kill so you always knew when it was clear. The pistol had unlimited ammo, but often when the clip was empty, it would automatically switch me to my rifle without me realising, it was so annoying seeing as it had ammo why it didn't just auto reload. What made it more annoying was when your rifle was completely empty, it didn't automatically switch to your pistol, oh no, no, no, that would be too convient for us now wouldn't it? There's also some enemies that can move around in the time fracture, they are also able to time dodge and can give you a more interesting fight.
There's a lot of exposition in this game, I love when games have it, but when main characters are talking, important parts of the story, if you pick up a collectable during, Jack will start talking about the collectable and the exposition continues! So Jack is speaking in two conversations at the same time and I'm now missing important parts of the story. Thanks, great job. The collectable dialogue should interrupt the story chatter and then let it continue after. In the first half of the game, there was this horrible, blurry, haze going on around characters when they were moving, it was genuinely making me feel sick and giving me a headache. Thankfully, it just seemed to be around in the first act. The loading was ridiculously long and the checkpoints felt bad. Sometimes I died and I go back to an earlier battle and die at the same but, only then for the checkpoint to load me in after that fight, the checkpoints weren't even the same. I even skipped a cutscene I already watched, after a checkpoint with caused the game to crash. Another thing I found really annoying was the time fractures. Every time Jack was about to die or some hazard was taking place, there was a convenient fractured that allowed you to escape. The hard difficulty wasn't too bad really, you could get overwhelmed in parts but the powers made it easy to persevere. The final battle had to be done in one go, but as long as you didn't play too brave, you wouldn't have had much of an issue.
Apparently, this started off as a sequel to Alan Wake, which I honestly would've much preferred. This isn't a bad game, but it's just too linear and lacking gameplay. The gameplay it has isn't even great. But the graphics, cast and performances are truly fantastic. I don't think it needed the TV show, they could've just done shorter cutscenes instead. I really liked the way they set up the sequel, whether it gets one we will have to see. I did quite enjoy this game, even if it sounds like I didn't, I was just massively let down with the final result. I mean, not being able to freeze time in a game with time manipulation powers, c'maaaan.
7.2/10
We play as Jack Joyce, better known as Shawn Ashmore who played Iceman in the Xmen film series. After a disastrous time machine experiment fails, Jack is gifted powers that allows him to manipulate time. Time fractures and will soon break if Jack is unable to fix the fracture. Jack's brother, Will, played by Dominic Monaghan, better known as Merry Brandybuck from Lord of the Rings, built the time machine. Jack's friend, Paul, played by Aidan Gillen better known as Little Finger from Game of Thrones, expands on Will's time machine and asks Jack to be there for a demonstration. When it fails, both Jack and Paul are gifted time powers. Paul believes time can't be fixed, leading the two time powered friends to now become enemies.
The story is really short, five chapters long that can easily be done in a few hours, the TV episodes are full twenty minute segments, though I enjoyed watching them, I could see how they could frustrate a player who just wanted to play the game. Some people featured heavily in the show, but practically didn't feature in the game, this was stupid because it felt like the game and show were following different people that just linked up, rather than following one story.
The cast is great, I knew most of them and they gave brilliant performances. Even the people I didn't know gave a great performance. The graphics are fantastic and the life-like appearances are scarily good. It's far too linear though, it doesn't feel like you're allowed to do anything except the story, it just felt so restricted. There's parts where you get to play as Paul, which I thought was really cool, but all you do is walk to an area, where you then get to make a choice that affected the story. I didn't understand why I got to make a decision as the bad guy, when I played as the good guy. I also felt that the choices weren't really that important, it all leads to the same ending, is that really giving you a choice?
You get some cool powers though. You can get a time sheild, time stop is a blast, which freezes an enemy and then let's you shoot bullets towards him and when it unfreezes, the bullets hit. There's time rush, which allows you to run in a slowed down world, you can takedown an enemy or run from falling debris with this. Time vision allows you to see enemies through wall, looks like heat vision. Time dodge allows you to quickly move away from enemies and their gunfire. What was really disapointing was that there was no power that completed stopped time, only when a time fracture occurred that happened. Even Timeshift let you freeze time. Jack was a just a normal guy, next he's some expert marksman? They should have let you briefly stop time and than be able to steal the enemies weapons or even subdue them when they were frozen. There should be some sort of stealth, freeze time and then sneak past the enemies, this would've fitted so much better I think.
The gun play is far from the best, but this is the only time when it really feels like a game, when you in action using your powers and guns. The platforming is really average and clunky, and the time fractures are a pain trying to get through some sequence. It's a cover-shooter that has no cover system! Jack sort of crouches behind things, but you can't move around in cover and you can't blind fire, I didn't enjoy the gun fights much at all. Something cool though, was when you killed the last enemy in the area, it did a slow motion kill so you always knew when it was clear. The pistol had unlimited ammo, but often when the clip was empty, it would automatically switch me to my rifle without me realising, it was so annoying seeing as it had ammo why it didn't just auto reload. What made it more annoying was when your rifle was completely empty, it didn't automatically switch to your pistol, oh no, no, no, that would be too convient for us now wouldn't it? There's also some enemies that can move around in the time fracture, they are also able to time dodge and can give you a more interesting fight.
There's a lot of exposition in this game, I love when games have it, but when main characters are talking, important parts of the story, if you pick up a collectable during, Jack will start talking about the collectable and the exposition continues! So Jack is speaking in two conversations at the same time and I'm now missing important parts of the story. Thanks, great job. The collectable dialogue should interrupt the story chatter and then let it continue after. In the first half of the game, there was this horrible, blurry, haze going on around characters when they were moving, it was genuinely making me feel sick and giving me a headache. Thankfully, it just seemed to be around in the first act. The loading was ridiculously long and the checkpoints felt bad. Sometimes I died and I go back to an earlier battle and die at the same but, only then for the checkpoint to load me in after that fight, the checkpoints weren't even the same. I even skipped a cutscene I already watched, after a checkpoint with caused the game to crash. Another thing I found really annoying was the time fractures. Every time Jack was about to die or some hazard was taking place, there was a convenient fractured that allowed you to escape. The hard difficulty wasn't too bad really, you could get overwhelmed in parts but the powers made it easy to persevere. The final battle had to be done in one go, but as long as you didn't play too brave, you wouldn't have had much of an issue.
Apparently, this started off as a sequel to Alan Wake, which I honestly would've much preferred. This isn't a bad game, but it's just too linear and lacking gameplay. The gameplay it has isn't even great. But the graphics, cast and performances are truly fantastic. I don't think it needed the TV show, they could've just done shorter cutscenes instead. I really liked the way they set up the sequel, whether it gets one we will have to see. I did quite enjoy this game, even if it sounds like I didn't, I was just massively let down with the final result. I mean, not being able to freeze time in a game with time manipulation powers, c'maaaan.
7.2/10
Sunday 11 December 2016
Sniper Elite 3 (Xbox One)
The third installment of the Sniper Elite series released in 2014 and is a slight improvement on the predecessor. There isn't really a whole lot of difference, but I enjoyed this one slightly more and the graphics look sharper, but also a slight cartoony look. Set in Africa, prior to the events of the previous game, it's now sunny and bright as oppose to the dull, bleakness we had previously.
We play as the same character again, I forget his name as he's not very memorable. He's still as bland as he ever was, the story again is nothing special. The missions are fairly decent and are much more enjoyable with a friend in coop. The xray kill cams are back and they are even more beautiful, it's a shame again that I barely got to see any, I have no idea how to trigger them.
You can now use all the of the d-pad to switch your weapons, rather than just scroll through. There's an inventory wheel, so you can now look and pick from your whole inventory at once, this was a great improvement as you have a lot of equipment. There's a new alert system that pops up over an enemies head when they see you, it shows yellow when they can see something and turns red when you have been spotted. You can now do a relocation by running away and hiding if you alert the enemies, so you can try your hand at stealth again. Using your binoculars to tag enemies, vehicles and explosives was a brilliant way to keep track of everything and plan your mission better.
I think this game is boring to play one, but with a partner it's made much more fun, they can help you out too if you get in a tough spot. There's now a wave mode where you and a friend can take out hordes of enemies. There's an online multiplayer that I didn't like too much, mainly because everyone else was a sniper so we were all just camping. It wasn't very fun to play.
The reviving was much better but the issue of you character going prone after was still present, it always caught me off guard and usually lead me back into trouble. The sprinting looks ridiculous, his torso can move around but his legs always look forward, it looks so dumb in an otherwise well done game. On one mission, when protecting an AI, he stopped moving and he needed to escape the area to finish the mission, this lead to having to restart the checkpoint. Even worse, when at the end of a mission, the cutscene wouldn't trigger meaning we had to restart the whole mission again.
I enjoyed Sniper 3 much more than 2, doing all the optional objectives made the game fun and when me and my partner tried to be really stealthy, we communicated and really worked on not getting caught and it was fun. Getting caught was always a nightmare and being in gunfights is not what you want in this one. I'll be investing in Sniper Elite 4, as long as it has a coop campaign. Also, show more goddamn xray kill cams!
7.1/10
We play as the same character again, I forget his name as he's not very memorable. He's still as bland as he ever was, the story again is nothing special. The missions are fairly decent and are much more enjoyable with a friend in coop. The xray kill cams are back and they are even more beautiful, it's a shame again that I barely got to see any, I have no idea how to trigger them.
You can now use all the of the d-pad to switch your weapons, rather than just scroll through. There's an inventory wheel, so you can now look and pick from your whole inventory at once, this was a great improvement as you have a lot of equipment. There's a new alert system that pops up over an enemies head when they see you, it shows yellow when they can see something and turns red when you have been spotted. You can now do a relocation by running away and hiding if you alert the enemies, so you can try your hand at stealth again. Using your binoculars to tag enemies, vehicles and explosives was a brilliant way to keep track of everything and plan your mission better.
I think this game is boring to play one, but with a partner it's made much more fun, they can help you out too if you get in a tough spot. There's now a wave mode where you and a friend can take out hordes of enemies. There's an online multiplayer that I didn't like too much, mainly because everyone else was a sniper so we were all just camping. It wasn't very fun to play.
The reviving was much better but the issue of you character going prone after was still present, it always caught me off guard and usually lead me back into trouble. The sprinting looks ridiculous, his torso can move around but his legs always look forward, it looks so dumb in an otherwise well done game. On one mission, when protecting an AI, he stopped moving and he needed to escape the area to finish the mission, this lead to having to restart the checkpoint. Even worse, when at the end of a mission, the cutscene wouldn't trigger meaning we had to restart the whole mission again.
I enjoyed Sniper 3 much more than 2, doing all the optional objectives made the game fun and when me and my partner tried to be really stealthy, we communicated and really worked on not getting caught and it was fun. Getting caught was always a nightmare and being in gunfights is not what you want in this one. I'll be investing in Sniper Elite 4, as long as it has a coop campaign. Also, show more goddamn xray kill cams!
7.1/10
Sunday 4 December 2016
Sniper Ghost Warrior (Xbox 360)
Sniper Ghost Warrior released in 2010 and is pretty much a bargain bin title. For a VERY cheap price this game can be fun. I got this game cheap, but I still thought it was garbage. How this game has two sequels is crazy, maybe they're better, but stick with Sniper Elite in the sniping genre.
There are only five acts and they're so boring. Even though sniper is in the title, you play as man with machine guns at times. Your playable character swaps out with another guy, but I didn't realise I was playing as someone else for a while after. There sniping was fun, but it was too easy, same with the silenced pistol. It was a one shot kill even on the hardest difficulty, but you could play stealthily with the silencers. The story was boring and I never cared about the characters, or even remember their names.
The crouch movement was ridiculously slow, little things on the floor were a nightmare to walk over, little rocks would stop you and you'd have to go around. When I was on top of a building I had to snipe machine gun enemies, somehow they were more accurate than me and I had to keep hiding away. The checkpoints were awful and often loaded me in front of enemies, terrible graphics, uninspired voice acting and it was just so boring. There was a multiplayer that simply shouldn't exist.
Some good, but very little here. Enemies appeared as red arrows on your map, so you always knew where they were, but they stayed on your mini map until they were dead, so you could be long gone from that area and they still show. There's bullet cams which are always cool to watch and there's concentration mode which slows down time to help you shoot better. You get a tonne of sniper ammo so you don't need to stealthily scrounge for some.
Do you want to know how bad this game is? When you climb a ladder, your gun is still pointed, you literally walk up the ladders like they're stairs. You can walk right past an enemy and they won't spot you, but they'll see you across a bridge. Sometimes aiming right at an enemy wouldn't kill them, but if you didn't change your aim and kept shooting, eventually they would die. On easy difficulty, the machine had no recoil, on hard the machine had no control and would be aiming at the sky so fast after shooting. What kind of game changes the gun play depending on difficultly? If you can, play through the whole game and just watch the awful ending cutscene. Four guys all walking together with explosions going off in the background in slow motion, they look like jackasses and this is how it ends. It's actually laughable.
I seriously don't know how there are more in this series, I'm really intrigued to try them and see if they improve. I wouldn't waste your time on this one, but you have to see the last mission and cutscene, YouTube it at least. Sniper Garbage Warrior.
4.8/10
There are only five acts and they're so boring. Even though sniper is in the title, you play as man with machine guns at times. Your playable character swaps out with another guy, but I didn't realise I was playing as someone else for a while after. There sniping was fun, but it was too easy, same with the silenced pistol. It was a one shot kill even on the hardest difficulty, but you could play stealthily with the silencers. The story was boring and I never cared about the characters, or even remember their names.
The crouch movement was ridiculously slow, little things on the floor were a nightmare to walk over, little rocks would stop you and you'd have to go around. When I was on top of a building I had to snipe machine gun enemies, somehow they were more accurate than me and I had to keep hiding away. The checkpoints were awful and often loaded me in front of enemies, terrible graphics, uninspired voice acting and it was just so boring. There was a multiplayer that simply shouldn't exist.
Some good, but very little here. Enemies appeared as red arrows on your map, so you always knew where they were, but they stayed on your mini map until they were dead, so you could be long gone from that area and they still show. There's bullet cams which are always cool to watch and there's concentration mode which slows down time to help you shoot better. You get a tonne of sniper ammo so you don't need to stealthily scrounge for some.
Do you want to know how bad this game is? When you climb a ladder, your gun is still pointed, you literally walk up the ladders like they're stairs. You can walk right past an enemy and they won't spot you, but they'll see you across a bridge. Sometimes aiming right at an enemy wouldn't kill them, but if you didn't change your aim and kept shooting, eventually they would die. On easy difficulty, the machine had no recoil, on hard the machine had no control and would be aiming at the sky so fast after shooting. What kind of game changes the gun play depending on difficultly? If you can, play through the whole game and just watch the awful ending cutscene. Four guys all walking together with explosions going off in the background in slow motion, they look like jackasses and this is how it ends. It's actually laughable.
I seriously don't know how there are more in this series, I'm really intrigued to try them and see if they improve. I wouldn't waste your time on this one, but you have to see the last mission and cutscene, YouTube it at least. Sniper Garbage Warrior.
4.8/10
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