If you read my Sunset Overdrive review, you'll know how much I loved it. Even though I'm not a big fan of DLC and season passes, some games deserve it and sometimes DLC is actually good, as rare as that may be.
With a reasonable priced season pass, that I picked up even cheaper due to a sale, we were given two story DLC's and Mooil Rig is the first. With no sequel announced at this point, I was well up for more with this title.
The story has us looking for Bryllcream once again, this time we are taken across the water, to the oil rig. Every main and side mission on this DLC takes place on the rig or the surrounding water. Only one side mission takes us to the original area.
As well as new missions, we get some new outfits and weapons to add to our huge arsenal. There aren't really any new enemies, only new variations of the already existing enemies. The humour and the great references are all back too. The final boss fight was pretty cool, but there were better fights in the original.
There weren't any new characters and the whole thing was so short. Both the story and side missions took me a little over two hours. I also suffered my worst glitch here too, I got stuck inside of a building and I could see all the enemies outside, running I around me, I had to restart it in the end.
For a fair price (discounted), it's worth picking up even if it's just to add to this amazing game and give out more humour. It was just really short and didn't bring that much new into it.
2.8/5
Monday, 30 January 2017
Thursday, 26 January 2017
Batman: Telltale Series (Xbox One)
Batman and Telltale? That's a winner in my book. I am a massive fan of the recent Telltale games and as an even bigger Batman fan, I had complete faith in this being a great story. One thing to mention, Telltale have certainly improved their releases, one every month it was, unlike the shambles that was the Game of Thrones and Borderlands series releases. I can't believe how fast it went with them releasing on time.
Everything has improved here, the engine runs so much smoother and you don't spend half the time playing waiting for the screen to show the next scene. There isn't a huge difference in graphics but they do look like an improvement. Some of the usual Telltale voice actors are back and the new ones are fantastic too.
Troy Baker stars as Batman, quite unusual seeing as he played The Joker in Arkham Origins. He did a great job, but he's no Kevin Conroy. As usual there were five episodes and I enjoyed them all. As Batman is a detective too, they decided to throw in some police work. It's much like Origins detective ploy which was great, a simpler version and adds a little more to the gameplay. There's also the attack plan, Batman chooses how he takes down each enemy and then does so in one run through, it's pretty cool when it all goes into affect.
There were way more appearances from the Batman universe than I expected, to name a few; Catwoman, Two-Face and even The Joker. It was an original story and one I never heard before, how infact Thomas Wayne was not the good man he was always said to be. I looked forward to every episode and to find out whether Thomas Wayne was as bad as he was looking to be. As well, we were thrown a new villain, Lady Arkham, leader of the Children of Arkham, who is the mysterious new villain?
The choices seemed to actually matter and not eventually happen, like the did in the earlier seasons of Walking Dead. One scene in the 'next time' trailer didn't even happen for me, because of the choices I made. I thought the characters and their portrayals were excellent. Catwoman and Harvey Dent were perfect, I loved every scene they were in. My favourite part in the whole series was the Arkham Asylum segment. It was a great way to sneak in some extra villians as well.
There were also character bios so you could get more information on characters you weren't so familiar on. There was a great end for fight and a really fantastic scene and lead to a very tough choice. I really didn't like the way the Batmobile could transform from a red ferrari... I didn't have many problem with the entirety of this game, other than the ferrari-Batmobile transformation, the only other issue was the next time scene never shower up at the end of episode three.
Telltale done an excellent job on Batman, brought a fresh story and excellent portrayals of the characters. I don't know if a second season is planned, but with that teaser ending (which I won't spoil) I hope there will be!
8.3/10
Everything has improved here, the engine runs so much smoother and you don't spend half the time playing waiting for the screen to show the next scene. There isn't a huge difference in graphics but they do look like an improvement. Some of the usual Telltale voice actors are back and the new ones are fantastic too.
Troy Baker stars as Batman, quite unusual seeing as he played The Joker in Arkham Origins. He did a great job, but he's no Kevin Conroy. As usual there were five episodes and I enjoyed them all. As Batman is a detective too, they decided to throw in some police work. It's much like Origins detective ploy which was great, a simpler version and adds a little more to the gameplay. There's also the attack plan, Batman chooses how he takes down each enemy and then does so in one run through, it's pretty cool when it all goes into affect.
There were way more appearances from the Batman universe than I expected, to name a few; Catwoman, Two-Face and even The Joker. It was an original story and one I never heard before, how infact Thomas Wayne was not the good man he was always said to be. I looked forward to every episode and to find out whether Thomas Wayne was as bad as he was looking to be. As well, we were thrown a new villain, Lady Arkham, leader of the Children of Arkham, who is the mysterious new villain?
The choices seemed to actually matter and not eventually happen, like the did in the earlier seasons of Walking Dead. One scene in the 'next time' trailer didn't even happen for me, because of the choices I made. I thought the characters and their portrayals were excellent. Catwoman and Harvey Dent were perfect, I loved every scene they were in. My favourite part in the whole series was the Arkham Asylum segment. It was a great way to sneak in some extra villians as well.
There were also character bios so you could get more information on characters you weren't so familiar on. There was a great end for fight and a really fantastic scene and lead to a very tough choice. I really didn't like the way the Batmobile could transform from a red ferrari... I didn't have many problem with the entirety of this game, other than the ferrari-Batmobile transformation, the only other issue was the next time scene never shower up at the end of episode three.
Telltale done an excellent job on Batman, brought a fresh story and excellent portrayals of the characters. I don't know if a second season is planned, but with that teaser ending (which I won't spoil) I hope there will be!
8.3/10
Thursday, 19 January 2017
Sunset Overdrive (Xbox One)
Sunset Overdrive was released in 2014 as an Xbox One exclusive and was heavily promoted by Xbox. Developed by Insomniac, which brought us the fantastic Spyro and Ratchet and Clank series, there were high hopes, did they succeed?
Set in the year 2027, in the fictional city, Sunset City. A company called FizzCo, released an energy drink, Overcharge, that turned drinkers into mutants, referred to as 'OD'. The player can grind on rails and phone wires to traverse quickly, as well as jumping and bouncing on cars and other things and wall run and air dash too. You are not meant to walk around here, if you're in a fight and aren't grinding and jumping, you won't last long.
You are treated to a a giant map, seeing as you can't drive you are able to fast travel, but grinding around is pretty fun you may not want to. The colours stand out, it's really colourful and bright, it looks beautiful and brand spanking new! The graphics are excellent, they're really cartoony, but there's lots of detail in all the characters. The voice acting is brilliant and the dialogue is hilarious, practically everything our character said had me in stitches. The customization is excellent too, you get full control over your character, with many clothing and other items to help you be who you want.
There is a huge arsenal of weapons, there's some really great and unique weapons, each weapon can be levelled up and becomes more powerful the more you use them. You able to have a few equipped at once and are able to have a nice variety of weapons. As well as guns, you have melee too. There's a few different melee weapons, but they work the same really. There are also amps that are sort of power-ups, there's so many to choose from you'll very likely find suitable ones to equip. There is also a few factions throughout the story leading to different kinds of allies and some funny characters.
The story is fun and a really good length, there's a bunch of side missions and a lot are fun. To add to this game that's packed with content, there's challenges, waves of enemies and even online. The online is called Chaos Squad and let's you play with a few other players and you can unlock content for your single-player. Together you do mini-missions that all lead to a night defense, where you protect your Overcharge from hordes of OD.
This is one of the funniest, craziest, funnest, beautiful looking games I've ever played, this game is unique. One of my favourite parts was a roller-coaster boss fight, you can grind along a roller-coaster track, while attacking enemies and chasing after a cart. This is jam-packed with easter eggs and references, the revive animations are great and hilarious, you can be dropped off from Doc's DeLorean or crawl out of a TV just like The Ring movie.
One other thing I love about this game, is that it knows it's a game. It has constant fourth wall breaking and the playable character often talks to the player themselves. At one part, the combo bar that is always in the corner of your screen is picked up by the character and he uses it as a weapon on a boss, I couldn't believe it, I loved it. There is even a physical 'invisible wall', it's a holographic wall with the words "invisible wall" printed on. There's even a side mission where you have to collect 'side mission icons', a woman in the game rents out her icons that indicate the person who has one floating on their head has a side mission and they never gave her them back, it's full of unique and funny stuff like that.
Honestly, there's not much I didn't like here. If I'm gnit picking then I'd say there was no health regeneration, you could only use health pick-ups which lead to a lot of dying. I have to mention that I wasn't a big fan of the combat at first, having to jump and grind around, but that's how the game is played. You have to adapt to it and once I did, I absolutely loved it.
There's a couple DLC packs for this one, but after playing through this, I don't just want DLC, I want a sequel...NOW. Continue the great work Insomniac and please keep this series coming.
8.5/10
Set in the year 2027, in the fictional city, Sunset City. A company called FizzCo, released an energy drink, Overcharge, that turned drinkers into mutants, referred to as 'OD'. The player can grind on rails and phone wires to traverse quickly, as well as jumping and bouncing on cars and other things and wall run and air dash too. You are not meant to walk around here, if you're in a fight and aren't grinding and jumping, you won't last long.
You are treated to a a giant map, seeing as you can't drive you are able to fast travel, but grinding around is pretty fun you may not want to. The colours stand out, it's really colourful and bright, it looks beautiful and brand spanking new! The graphics are excellent, they're really cartoony, but there's lots of detail in all the characters. The voice acting is brilliant and the dialogue is hilarious, practically everything our character said had me in stitches. The customization is excellent too, you get full control over your character, with many clothing and other items to help you be who you want.
There is a huge arsenal of weapons, there's some really great and unique weapons, each weapon can be levelled up and becomes more powerful the more you use them. You able to have a few equipped at once and are able to have a nice variety of weapons. As well as guns, you have melee too. There's a few different melee weapons, but they work the same really. There are also amps that are sort of power-ups, there's so many to choose from you'll very likely find suitable ones to equip. There is also a few factions throughout the story leading to different kinds of allies and some funny characters.
The story is fun and a really good length, there's a bunch of side missions and a lot are fun. To add to this game that's packed with content, there's challenges, waves of enemies and even online. The online is called Chaos Squad and let's you play with a few other players and you can unlock content for your single-player. Together you do mini-missions that all lead to a night defense, where you protect your Overcharge from hordes of OD.
This is one of the funniest, craziest, funnest, beautiful looking games I've ever played, this game is unique. One of my favourite parts was a roller-coaster boss fight, you can grind along a roller-coaster track, while attacking enemies and chasing after a cart. This is jam-packed with easter eggs and references, the revive animations are great and hilarious, you can be dropped off from Doc's DeLorean or crawl out of a TV just like The Ring movie.
One other thing I love about this game, is that it knows it's a game. It has constant fourth wall breaking and the playable character often talks to the player themselves. At one part, the combo bar that is always in the corner of your screen is picked up by the character and he uses it as a weapon on a boss, I couldn't believe it, I loved it. There is even a physical 'invisible wall', it's a holographic wall with the words "invisible wall" printed on. There's even a side mission where you have to collect 'side mission icons', a woman in the game rents out her icons that indicate the person who has one floating on their head has a side mission and they never gave her them back, it's full of unique and funny stuff like that.
Honestly, there's not much I didn't like here. If I'm gnit picking then I'd say there was no health regeneration, you could only use health pick-ups which lead to a lot of dying. I have to mention that I wasn't a big fan of the combat at first, having to jump and grind around, but that's how the game is played. You have to adapt to it and once I did, I absolutely loved it.
There's a couple DLC packs for this one, but after playing through this, I don't just want DLC, I want a sequel...NOW. Continue the great work Insomniac and please keep this series coming.
8.5/10
Thursday, 12 January 2017
Sam and Max: The Devil's Playhouse (PS3)
I've always wanted to play a Sam and Max game ever since I saw them, I was heavily put off with the point and click aspect. Telltale has come a long way with their point and click games and the way they tell stories is amazing. I had to go back to their earlier games to really see how far they've come as developers. Like the more recent games, it's episodic and is five episodes long. Although it follows a story, each individual episode feels like it's own.
I love both Sam and Max, Sam is a giant talking dog in a suit and Max is an eccentric rabbit, together they are private investigators. I love the cartoony-ness and the environments we're taken to. A lot of the side characters are less impressive, but most of them look great in the cartoon setting. I really liked how different each episode was, it wasn't always Sam and Max as the playable characters.
There is a lot of funny dialogue, the dialogue options also fade out once you've picked them so you know if you've mentioned it. Max has psychic powers, he can see future visions, read minds, make people say things and a few others. Because all the episodes are so different, you don't get access to all the powers from the start, or even at the same time. The saving was really slow and it was awkward to tell which was the right save file.
Episode 1: The Penal Zone. I was thrown straight into the game here, no characters were really introduced so I assumed we had seen all these characters in previous games. You are on a spaceship with an even space gorilla who has captured you and a talking brain is your guide in getting off the ship. Yep. I didn't know what the heck was going on either. It makes more sense as the episodes went on though. We were introduced into a few of Sam's pyschic powers. We get to read minds and also use a modelling clay that lets us transform into useful objects. The whole episode takes place on the spaceship.
Episode 2: The Tomb of Sammun-Mak. The second episode was so much different, there was a projector with a number of reels. Each reel was a different part of the episode and you could play at later parts from the start. I thought this was really well done, having to jump ahead to make progress in a previous episode was clever. We controlled Sam and Max's grandfather as we went to the past and continue the search for the Devil's Toybox.
Episode 3: They Stole Max's Brain. The beginning of this episode was my favourite part of the entire game. Sam, usually with a happy face, gets mad as he interrogates fellow citizens about Max's brain. I love how snarky Sam was and how he interrupted people, it was really funny. With Max out of the picture, Sam is accompanied by the child pharaoh; Sammun-Mak. His brain is temporarily put in Max's body, therefore giving him the same abilities as what Max had.
Episode 4: Beyond the Alley of the Dolls. A horde of half-naked Sam clones fill the streets, as they search for the toys of power. With Sam and Max also looking for the toys of power, they discover a cloning chamber underground, with the clonemaster being the one tracking down the toys. The episode ends with a boss fight that leads to a huge problem.
Episode 5: The City That Dares Not Sleep. With a giant monster roaming the city, Sam and some friends must journey into the beast and take it down from the inside. Travelling through different areas of the body like the stomach, brain etc is where the majority of the game takes place. We also get to finally confront General Skun-ka'pe, who has been the enemy since the first episode.
You were thrown into this game as if you had played them before, all the characters were introduced like we already knew them. As a new player, I didn't like it, I wanted to know about the characters, rather than just a quick hello and that's it. If the older games ever go on sale, I'd definitely pick them up, as I thought they were enjoyable and I loved how unique each episode was.
6.6/10
I love both Sam and Max, Sam is a giant talking dog in a suit and Max is an eccentric rabbit, together they are private investigators. I love the cartoony-ness and the environments we're taken to. A lot of the side characters are less impressive, but most of them look great in the cartoon setting. I really liked how different each episode was, it wasn't always Sam and Max as the playable characters.
There is a lot of funny dialogue, the dialogue options also fade out once you've picked them so you know if you've mentioned it. Max has psychic powers, he can see future visions, read minds, make people say things and a few others. Because all the episodes are so different, you don't get access to all the powers from the start, or even at the same time. The saving was really slow and it was awkward to tell which was the right save file.
Episode 1: The Penal Zone. I was thrown straight into the game here, no characters were really introduced so I assumed we had seen all these characters in previous games. You are on a spaceship with an even space gorilla who has captured you and a talking brain is your guide in getting off the ship. Yep. I didn't know what the heck was going on either. It makes more sense as the episodes went on though. We were introduced into a few of Sam's pyschic powers. We get to read minds and also use a modelling clay that lets us transform into useful objects. The whole episode takes place on the spaceship.
Episode 2: The Tomb of Sammun-Mak. The second episode was so much different, there was a projector with a number of reels. Each reel was a different part of the episode and you could play at later parts from the start. I thought this was really well done, having to jump ahead to make progress in a previous episode was clever. We controlled Sam and Max's grandfather as we went to the past and continue the search for the Devil's Toybox.
Episode 3: They Stole Max's Brain. The beginning of this episode was my favourite part of the entire game. Sam, usually with a happy face, gets mad as he interrogates fellow citizens about Max's brain. I love how snarky Sam was and how he interrupted people, it was really funny. With Max out of the picture, Sam is accompanied by the child pharaoh; Sammun-Mak. His brain is temporarily put in Max's body, therefore giving him the same abilities as what Max had.
Episode 4: Beyond the Alley of the Dolls. A horde of half-naked Sam clones fill the streets, as they search for the toys of power. With Sam and Max also looking for the toys of power, they discover a cloning chamber underground, with the clonemaster being the one tracking down the toys. The episode ends with a boss fight that leads to a huge problem.
Episode 5: The City That Dares Not Sleep. With a giant monster roaming the city, Sam and some friends must journey into the beast and take it down from the inside. Travelling through different areas of the body like the stomach, brain etc is where the majority of the game takes place. We also get to finally confront General Skun-ka'pe, who has been the enemy since the first episode.
You were thrown into this game as if you had played them before, all the characters were introduced like we already knew them. As a new player, I didn't like it, I wanted to know about the characters, rather than just a quick hello and that's it. If the older games ever go on sale, I'd definitely pick them up, as I thought they were enjoyable and I loved how unique each episode was.
6.6/10
Thursday, 5 January 2017
Wet (Xbox 360)
Wet released in 2009 and was published by Bethesda. It's a third-person shooter that heavily features slow motion shooting. You can jump, slide on your knees, wall run and slide down ladders in slow motion, helping you kill enemies. You can also use swords as well as your guns.
We play as Rubi Malone, voiced by Eliza Dushku, who is a ' problem solver'. The game seemed to be influenced by Kill Bill, which was great, Rubi got alerted just like the Bride does in the movies, with the alarming noise and close up, that's what triggers the rage mode. The rage is an all red screen and the enemies are white silhouettes, it's really cool to look at and were my favourite parts of the game. It has a constant film screen, during the cutscenes and gameplay, it gets annoying when you realise it doesn't go away.
The story wasn't really that great, there were so many villains that some of the good ones barely featured. One of the best villains had a one-on-one fight with you and left during, he never came back. Most boss fights were just quick time events and the final villain was literally press two buttons to kill them. The mission were you fell out of a plane and do a freefall section, dodging all the debris was awful, it was so difficult to tell if you were going to hit anything or not. There were on the rail sections jumping from car to car which started off pretty cool, but soon got boring. There were some questions I had after the game, like did I save ny friend who got captured, we never saw him again, why did everyone I do a job for then turn on me? Like I said, the story wasn't great.
The graphics were pretty crappy, but the gameplay was half decent. The slow motion acrobatics were easily the best thing about the game. The split targeting was great too, Rubi was always holding two guns, so during slow motion you could aim at one enemy and the other gun would automatically target a different enemy. The music fitted this game brilliantly and most of the soundtrack cool. The side characters were pretty terrible, all the good guys were terrible, the enemies were much more memorable though. They hardly ever featured though, I can't help think how much better the villains and the game overall would've been better had they appeared more.
It's all about getting points, the more stylish and the higher the combo, the more points you'll get. You can spend these points on upgrades that can give you more health and storage weapons. You get a nice arsenal of weapons, as well as the pistols and swords, you can get submachine guns, shotguns and crossbows.
The platforming was awful, the worst I've ever played. The Rubi vision was helpful in indicating where you could jump to, because without it, it was difficult to see what you could actually jump towards. The camera angle would change, so when you were shimmy along a ledge holding the analog left, the camera change then meant you had to hold it up. It was incredibly frustrating not knowing which way to move when traversing on ledges. The gun reticle was a tiny circle and wasn't good enough, loading screens were hidden badly by having to open doors with your sword where you would then repeatedly mashed a button.
There were more things I had problems with, every time you picked up health there was a cutscene of Rubi drinking the bottle then throwing it up and shooting it, you could skip it, but it wasn't needed. The were mandatory weapon challenges you had to do before you could proceed to the story and I never liked them. There was a turret section that had no music and was so boring, during it I couldn't see the far away enemies due to the film filter, but when I aimed in, I could see them perfectly. I also died in a cutscene of a gate closing which is impossible to skip, despite that and the other problems, I did have some fun on the game.
The hard difficulty wasn't that bad, you would die really fast though. There were a bunch of difficulties to try, there is another difficultly after hard I'm going to try. There are also the challenges to try and also Golden Bullets difficulty, it's a one bullet kill on enemies but you die quite fast. There's also points mode, where the aim is to just rack up all the points you can get. There was a planned sequel that got cancelled, I would definitely have liked to give it a go so it's a shame that they canned it. This one probably isn't really worth a go thinking about it now, seeing as there's no follow up and games do the slow motion better, so maybe slip this one.
6.1/10
We play as Rubi Malone, voiced by Eliza Dushku, who is a ' problem solver'. The game seemed to be influenced by Kill Bill, which was great, Rubi got alerted just like the Bride does in the movies, with the alarming noise and close up, that's what triggers the rage mode. The rage is an all red screen and the enemies are white silhouettes, it's really cool to look at and were my favourite parts of the game. It has a constant film screen, during the cutscenes and gameplay, it gets annoying when you realise it doesn't go away.
The story wasn't really that great, there were so many villains that some of the good ones barely featured. One of the best villains had a one-on-one fight with you and left during, he never came back. Most boss fights were just quick time events and the final villain was literally press two buttons to kill them. The mission were you fell out of a plane and do a freefall section, dodging all the debris was awful, it was so difficult to tell if you were going to hit anything or not. There were on the rail sections jumping from car to car which started off pretty cool, but soon got boring. There were some questions I had after the game, like did I save ny friend who got captured, we never saw him again, why did everyone I do a job for then turn on me? Like I said, the story wasn't great.
The graphics were pretty crappy, but the gameplay was half decent. The slow motion acrobatics were easily the best thing about the game. The split targeting was great too, Rubi was always holding two guns, so during slow motion you could aim at one enemy and the other gun would automatically target a different enemy. The music fitted this game brilliantly and most of the soundtrack cool. The side characters were pretty terrible, all the good guys were terrible, the enemies were much more memorable though. They hardly ever featured though, I can't help think how much better the villains and the game overall would've been better had they appeared more.
It's all about getting points, the more stylish and the higher the combo, the more points you'll get. You can spend these points on upgrades that can give you more health and storage weapons. You get a nice arsenal of weapons, as well as the pistols and swords, you can get submachine guns, shotguns and crossbows.
The platforming was awful, the worst I've ever played. The Rubi vision was helpful in indicating where you could jump to, because without it, it was difficult to see what you could actually jump towards. The camera angle would change, so when you were shimmy along a ledge holding the analog left, the camera change then meant you had to hold it up. It was incredibly frustrating not knowing which way to move when traversing on ledges. The gun reticle was a tiny circle and wasn't good enough, loading screens were hidden badly by having to open doors with your sword where you would then repeatedly mashed a button.
There were more things I had problems with, every time you picked up health there was a cutscene of Rubi drinking the bottle then throwing it up and shooting it, you could skip it, but it wasn't needed. The were mandatory weapon challenges you had to do before you could proceed to the story and I never liked them. There was a turret section that had no music and was so boring, during it I couldn't see the far away enemies due to the film filter, but when I aimed in, I could see them perfectly. I also died in a cutscene of a gate closing which is impossible to skip, despite that and the other problems, I did have some fun on the game.
The hard difficulty wasn't that bad, you would die really fast though. There were a bunch of difficulties to try, there is another difficultly after hard I'm going to try. There are also the challenges to try and also Golden Bullets difficulty, it's a one bullet kill on enemies but you die quite fast. There's also points mode, where the aim is to just rack up all the points you can get. There was a planned sequel that got cancelled, I would definitely have liked to give it a go so it's a shame that they canned it. This one probably isn't really worth a go thinking about it now, seeing as there's no follow up and games do the slow motion better, so maybe slip this one.
6.1/10
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