The Bright Lord is the second story based DLC for Shadow of Mordor, and for the first time we don't play as Talion, we play as his counterpart, Celebrimbor.
Celebrimbor forged the Rings of Power, while manipulated By Sauron. Celebrimbor aims to brand Uruks to fight for him in his fight against The Dark Lord himself.
There are some new abilities, but now you no longer have Talion at your side, you lose some too. You are now gifted with the ring, it's a heavily over powered weapon, but it's the Ring of Power to be fair. It slows down time and allows you to hack down a significant number of enemies. The health has now been halved as you're no longer bound to Talion, leaving you to fight stronger and smarter. The whole goal is to brand Uruks, you want to be constantly branding every Uruk possible to fight for you.
The missions are quite strong, they are full of battles and they are tough. I've had my most difficult fights in this DLC, so if you found Shadow of Mordor quite simple, this will sort you out. You're never given a minute to relax, constant enemies and your branded Uruks aren't suddenly stronger.
The best part is the final mission. A one on one fight with Sauron. It's a pretty rare thing and he does a lot of damage. My problem was it was far too easy. It was really cool and disappointing at the same time.
4/5
Thursday 31 August 2017
Monday 28 August 2017
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor: Lord of the Hunt DLC (Xbox One)
I loved Shadow of Mordor, so much that I saved the DLC's for about two years so I had more to play. Lord of the Hunt once again stars Talion, and brings back out dwarven friend, Torvin. They must fight against the beastmaster warchiefs and prove they themselves can tame the new breeds of creatures.
There are new variations of creatures we've seen before. Caragarth's are stealthy Caragors, a wretched Graug can use a toxic bile to hurt enemies and you can use a horde of Ghuls to attack your foes. Graug's can also grab enemies and eat them to restore health and they can even insta kill some captains, saving you a fight.
There are new missions and side missions. The story is pretty short and not many of the missions are that memorable. There's also new warchiefs and captains.
You can tame and ride wretched Graugs and you feel pretty empowered, although they can die quick if you're not eating your enemies. There is also a warchief who rides a Graug, luckily for us, are tamed horde of Ghuls can attack them. Another problem, a warchief has his own Ghuls army, so it's a pretty even sided content and shows the enemies are just as powerful as you.
DLC is very often a let down, it's by far not a poor piece of DLC, but I don't think it's on the same level as the original game. The new tameable beasts are easily the high point here.
3.7/5
There are new variations of creatures we've seen before. Caragarth's are stealthy Caragors, a wretched Graug can use a toxic bile to hurt enemies and you can use a horde of Ghuls to attack your foes. Graug's can also grab enemies and eat them to restore health and they can even insta kill some captains, saving you a fight.
There are new missions and side missions. The story is pretty short and not many of the missions are that memorable. There's also new warchiefs and captains.
You can tame and ride wretched Graugs and you feel pretty empowered, although they can die quick if you're not eating your enemies. There is also a warchief who rides a Graug, luckily for us, are tamed horde of Ghuls can attack them. Another problem, a warchief has his own Ghuls army, so it's a pretty even sided content and shows the enemies are just as powerful as you.
DLC is very often a let down, it's by far not a poor piece of DLC, but I don't think it's on the same level as the original game. The new tameable beasts are easily the high point here.
3.7/5
Thursday 24 August 2017
Until Dawn (PS4)
Until Dawn released in 2015 as a PlayStation exclusive. It's your classic teen slasher/horror movie, where you make all the decisions instead of screaming at the TV, "Why did she go in there?!". Not many people survive slasher movies, will you save anyone, or no one?
First things first, even though they're made by different developers, the gameplay is identical to Heavy Rain. This is more of a cinematic experience. Very little gameplay and it's all about the story and your decisions. The characters are real actors, and you may even recognise a couple. The game stars Rami Malek (Mr Robot), Hayden Panettiere (Heroes), Peter Stormare (Prison Break) among others. There are eight characters and throughout the story you will play as all of them. Initially, you can save everyone and they can also all die, for me, only three survived my first playthrough and I tried to save them all.
Josh and his twin sisters, Beth and Hannah invite all they're friends to the 'cabin in the woods'. Most of their friends play an embarrassing prank on Hannah, causing her to (stupidly) run out of the cabin at night, alone. Beth gives chase to find her, and ultimately leads to their deaths, falling off the cliff together. A year after the twins disappearance (none of their friends know they're dead) Josh invites the same friends back to the cabin, to party and remember his sisters. Everyone returns and events start to take place.
In between each chapter, you're in an office with a therapist. He asks you questions and you're given choices. Things like what scares you most or which of the characters you like better after getting to know them. It makes you think carefully about your choices. Will you encounter spiders if you say you're more afraid of them? Will this character die if I say I prefer them? You're too scared to pick an answer and too busy thinking what could ultimately happen. After all, choice matters here.
The acting is fantastic, Peter Stormare in particular is brilliant. The characters are very likeable, some are a lot harder to like than others. A character I thought would annoy me, ended up being my favourite, that was Mike. He seemed to be one of the more favoured characters, as he was given a lot of time. Another favourite of mine was Chris. He was funny and very likable. The dialogue is good, but there are certainly a lot of poor lines. Seeing as it's a game full of horn teenagers, there's a lot of cringey sexual innuendos. "Sex-capade", that's all I'll say. As I said earlier, you get to play as all the characters, some were a lot more involved, which I found disappointing because I'd like to have seen more of some others.
It's a very intense game, you're always on your toes that something will happen or your choice will have a drastic consequence. My issue was that the game hounded you with jump scares right at the beginning. Honestly it just frustrated me and made me not want to play. They throw far too many so soon as nothing's really happening. Once the games takes a more frightening turn, the jump scares slow down. It's a fantastic story, it goes a completely different direction than what you'd originally expect. It's not the only twist either, but there is one twist most players would expect. The game plays heavily on 'The Butterfly Effect' and there's a table that shows your decisions and what ultimately happens for that choice. It's really helpful to see why something happened if it doesn't seem like it should've.
There were also collectables that helped with choices in the story. There were clues about the mystery man and other things that helped influence your choices. There were also totems, some showed dangerous activities and even characters deaths, seeing these put you on edge and made you fully aware of what could happen and want to look out for. You could pick up and inspect items, most gave more information to the story, but weren't needed to be picked up if you weren't interested in the extra story.
Most gameplay was just quick time events, but the standout for me was the 'stay still', literally put your controller the fuck down and down move a muscle. These moments were amazing! They were so tense and absolutely terrifying if you fucked up. I literally froze, my hands stuck in the air, my breathing was on hold. I was terrified! There's some great camera angles, they let you see you character and vast spaces of the area you're in. The flashlight was great, you used it to look around and the light pointed where ever you aimed the camera with the right analog stick.
There were also character stats, they showed how strong or weak the relationship was between each character. I didn't see the point of it really, I don't think it really influenced much. It's got all the classic horror tropes, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me want to watch all those classic 80s slasher movies.
If you liked Heavy Rain and Telltale's story based games, you'll love this, unless you scare easy and aren't fan of horror and gore. I'm not huge horror fan, but I'm a massive story and choice game fan. This was my kinda shit. Now excuse me while I go watch Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street.
7.9/10
First things first, even though they're made by different developers, the gameplay is identical to Heavy Rain. This is more of a cinematic experience. Very little gameplay and it's all about the story and your decisions. The characters are real actors, and you may even recognise a couple. The game stars Rami Malek (Mr Robot), Hayden Panettiere (Heroes), Peter Stormare (Prison Break) among others. There are eight characters and throughout the story you will play as all of them. Initially, you can save everyone and they can also all die, for me, only three survived my first playthrough and I tried to save them all.
Josh and his twin sisters, Beth and Hannah invite all they're friends to the 'cabin in the woods'. Most of their friends play an embarrassing prank on Hannah, causing her to (stupidly) run out of the cabin at night, alone. Beth gives chase to find her, and ultimately leads to their deaths, falling off the cliff together. A year after the twins disappearance (none of their friends know they're dead) Josh invites the same friends back to the cabin, to party and remember his sisters. Everyone returns and events start to take place.
In between each chapter, you're in an office with a therapist. He asks you questions and you're given choices. Things like what scares you most or which of the characters you like better after getting to know them. It makes you think carefully about your choices. Will you encounter spiders if you say you're more afraid of them? Will this character die if I say I prefer them? You're too scared to pick an answer and too busy thinking what could ultimately happen. After all, choice matters here.
The acting is fantastic, Peter Stormare in particular is brilliant. The characters are very likeable, some are a lot harder to like than others. A character I thought would annoy me, ended up being my favourite, that was Mike. He seemed to be one of the more favoured characters, as he was given a lot of time. Another favourite of mine was Chris. He was funny and very likable. The dialogue is good, but there are certainly a lot of poor lines. Seeing as it's a game full of horn teenagers, there's a lot of cringey sexual innuendos. "Sex-capade", that's all I'll say. As I said earlier, you get to play as all the characters, some were a lot more involved, which I found disappointing because I'd like to have seen more of some others.
It's a very intense game, you're always on your toes that something will happen or your choice will have a drastic consequence. My issue was that the game hounded you with jump scares right at the beginning. Honestly it just frustrated me and made me not want to play. They throw far too many so soon as nothing's really happening. Once the games takes a more frightening turn, the jump scares slow down. It's a fantastic story, it goes a completely different direction than what you'd originally expect. It's not the only twist either, but there is one twist most players would expect. The game plays heavily on 'The Butterfly Effect' and there's a table that shows your decisions and what ultimately happens for that choice. It's really helpful to see why something happened if it doesn't seem like it should've.
There were also collectables that helped with choices in the story. There were clues about the mystery man and other things that helped influence your choices. There were also totems, some showed dangerous activities and even characters deaths, seeing these put you on edge and made you fully aware of what could happen and want to look out for. You could pick up and inspect items, most gave more information to the story, but weren't needed to be picked up if you weren't interested in the extra story.
Most gameplay was just quick time events, but the standout for me was the 'stay still', literally put your controller the fuck down and down move a muscle. These moments were amazing! They were so tense and absolutely terrifying if you fucked up. I literally froze, my hands stuck in the air, my breathing was on hold. I was terrified! There's some great camera angles, they let you see you character and vast spaces of the area you're in. The flashlight was great, you used it to look around and the light pointed where ever you aimed the camera with the right analog stick.
There were also character stats, they showed how strong or weak the relationship was between each character. I didn't see the point of it really, I don't think it really influenced much. It's got all the classic horror tropes, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me want to watch all those classic 80s slasher movies.
If you liked Heavy Rain and Telltale's story based games, you'll love this, unless you scare easy and aren't fan of horror and gore. I'm not huge horror fan, but I'm a massive story and choice game fan. This was my kinda shit. Now excuse me while I go watch Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street.
7.9/10
Thursday 17 August 2017
Max Curse of the Brotherhood (Xbox One)
Max Curse of the Brotherhood is a side scrolling puzzle game. It released in 2013 and is a sequel to Max and the Magic Marker.
Max finds his young brother, Felix, playing and breaking his toys. An annoyed Max searches for a way to make his brother disappear. He finds a spell and reads it out loud and Felix is soon taken through a portal by the evil Mustacho. Max realises the precautions of Felix being taken, he immediately jumps through the portal to save him.
I gotta say I love the look of this game, the animation is really well done and the graphics are beautiful, great zoomed out shots and gorgeous environments. The puzzles aren't very easy and they're not overly hard, you may be challenged in quite a few areas.
Armed with a literal magic marker, you're able to draw objects to complete puzzles. Unfortunately you can't draw whatever and wherever you want. It's clearly indicated where you're meant to draw. You're able to draw pillars, vines, branches, water flows and fire balls. All these will help you solve puzzles and get passed enemies. There aren't many enemies, but there are a few variations, they're very deadly to Max though. Only the fire ball can outright kill an enemy.
If you mess up your drawing, you can simply destroy it and try again. Another cool thing is you can pass fire balls between branches and also attach vines to branches. Water flows carry you in the direction they flow, vines let you swing, you can do some platforming on branches, pillars take you higher and fire balls destroy walls and enemies. There's cool slow motion jumps that indicate you're in a life threatening position, so you have to act quick.
There is only one actual boss fight near the end of the game against Mustacho himself. There are also running sections where you run and platform your way from a dangerous, gigantic mobster.
It's a fun game, amazing visuals and a decent challenge with the puzzles. It's been free and it's pretty cheap, so I'd say it's worth a go if you missed it.
6.3/10
Max finds his young brother, Felix, playing and breaking his toys. An annoyed Max searches for a way to make his brother disappear. He finds a spell and reads it out loud and Felix is soon taken through a portal by the evil Mustacho. Max realises the precautions of Felix being taken, he immediately jumps through the portal to save him.
I gotta say I love the look of this game, the animation is really well done and the graphics are beautiful, great zoomed out shots and gorgeous environments. The puzzles aren't very easy and they're not overly hard, you may be challenged in quite a few areas.
Armed with a literal magic marker, you're able to draw objects to complete puzzles. Unfortunately you can't draw whatever and wherever you want. It's clearly indicated where you're meant to draw. You're able to draw pillars, vines, branches, water flows and fire balls. All these will help you solve puzzles and get passed enemies. There aren't many enemies, but there are a few variations, they're very deadly to Max though. Only the fire ball can outright kill an enemy.
If you mess up your drawing, you can simply destroy it and try again. Another cool thing is you can pass fire balls between branches and also attach vines to branches. Water flows carry you in the direction they flow, vines let you swing, you can do some platforming on branches, pillars take you higher and fire balls destroy walls and enemies. There's cool slow motion jumps that indicate you're in a life threatening position, so you have to act quick.
There is only one actual boss fight near the end of the game against Mustacho himself. There are also running sections where you run and platform your way from a dangerous, gigantic mobster.
It's a fun game, amazing visuals and a decent challenge with the puzzles. It's been free and it's pretty cheap, so I'd say it's worth a go if you missed it.
6.3/10
Thursday 10 August 2017
Bastion (Xbox 360)
Bastion released in 2011, it's a role playing action game. We play as 'The Kid' and are guided through the story by the narrator. The narrator's voice is one to rival Morgan Freeman's.
Caelondia is a city that was fractured by a catastrophe. The kid meets the narrator, a man called Rucks. He instructs the kid to collect cores to rebuild the city. Each core you bring back powers the city and allows you to build new areas of the city, areas like upgrade stations, item pick ups you missed and a few more.
You have the option of which way to proceed with the story, it's not strict in the order you play. There's also optional proving grounds missions, which let you practice with each weapon. There's a huge amount of weapons, you're only equipped with two at a time, one melee and one ranged weapon. There are also health pick ups and potions that let you use your chosen power ups. My favourite weapon was the machete, you could swing it so fast no one had a chance to attack you. My favourite ability was spawning the squibs, a little floating creature, they drew enemies away from you and they attacked for you too.
The world is bright and colourful. Aesthetically beautiful, what makes it even more beautiful; the world falls down from the sky and builds as you walked forward. The world will stay empty besides the platform you're standing on. The world will only build if you move and it looks fantastic. It. Blends even better with the narrator talking.
A side objective to help the game stay more entertaining is the memorial. It gives tasks of all different kinds to implement as you play the game. You can also do these dream sequences where you fight waves of enemies and help practice your fighting skills. Annoying you can respawn off the map leaving you to be killed instantly, especially on levels where you map falls apart.
The story is really interesting, the gameplay is pretty good I just found it hard to play a lot. I played a couple missions a day, I didn't find it addictive enough to play through in one day, although you can. The world building and the narrator are enough for you to try this.
7/10
Caelondia is a city that was fractured by a catastrophe. The kid meets the narrator, a man called Rucks. He instructs the kid to collect cores to rebuild the city. Each core you bring back powers the city and allows you to build new areas of the city, areas like upgrade stations, item pick ups you missed and a few more.
You have the option of which way to proceed with the story, it's not strict in the order you play. There's also optional proving grounds missions, which let you practice with each weapon. There's a huge amount of weapons, you're only equipped with two at a time, one melee and one ranged weapon. There are also health pick ups and potions that let you use your chosen power ups. My favourite weapon was the machete, you could swing it so fast no one had a chance to attack you. My favourite ability was spawning the squibs, a little floating creature, they drew enemies away from you and they attacked for you too.
The world is bright and colourful. Aesthetically beautiful, what makes it even more beautiful; the world falls down from the sky and builds as you walked forward. The world will stay empty besides the platform you're standing on. The world will only build if you move and it looks fantastic. It. Blends even better with the narrator talking.
A side objective to help the game stay more entertaining is the memorial. It gives tasks of all different kinds to implement as you play the game. You can also do these dream sequences where you fight waves of enemies and help practice your fighting skills. Annoying you can respawn off the map leaving you to be killed instantly, especially on levels where you map falls apart.
The story is really interesting, the gameplay is pretty good I just found it hard to play a lot. I played a couple missions a day, I didn't find it addictive enough to play through in one day, although you can. The world building and the narrator are enough for you to try this.
7/10
Thursday 3 August 2017
SpeedRunners (Xbox One)
SpeedRunners launched on Xbox One with the Games With Gold program a couple years after its release on Steam. I never looked twice at this originally, when it came out I looked at some clips and I thought this could be fun with friends.
And it was! I've never laughed so much and had fun playing a game like this in quite some time. The concept is so simple, but so fucking fun too. The objective of the game? Out run your opponents. There's a nice group of characters, more if you purchase the extras. They look cool and they're bright and colourful. There's a lot of maps to race on, they zig zag all over the place, they're so fun to race on. You can also collect power ups; you can drop boxes for your opponents to trip on, freeze your opponents and pull them all the way to the back with the golden claw, the claw's even better when you immediately pull someone back after they done it to you first.
There is also a single-player mode, it's four chapters long and each chapter has four parts. The final part is a one on one race with the boss, after you finish each chapter you unlock the runner you raced in the one on one. The single-player is fun, but I promise you'll have a lot more playing online races and with your friends, that's how the game is meant to be played.
It isn't all just running though, you have to jump over obstacles, slide under walls, swing over spikes (although it's absolutely hilarious watching a runner roll through the spikes), use boosts and a punch of pick ups. Golden claw is the best because you can literally pull someone back and make them go off screen and get an instant win. You can also block power ups when someone uses them on you, you're able to slide to dodge an attack or block them with a crate pick up, it takes a bit of practice.
You gain XP, unlock new maps, characters and skins. It's so fun and very addictive. For free, this was a bargain and one of my favourite games with gold over the past for years. If you missed it, buy it! It's worth it.
7.5/10
And it was! I've never laughed so much and had fun playing a game like this in quite some time. The concept is so simple, but so fucking fun too. The objective of the game? Out run your opponents. There's a nice group of characters, more if you purchase the extras. They look cool and they're bright and colourful. There's a lot of maps to race on, they zig zag all over the place, they're so fun to race on. You can also collect power ups; you can drop boxes for your opponents to trip on, freeze your opponents and pull them all the way to the back with the golden claw, the claw's even better when you immediately pull someone back after they done it to you first.
There is also a single-player mode, it's four chapters long and each chapter has four parts. The final part is a one on one race with the boss, after you finish each chapter you unlock the runner you raced in the one on one. The single-player is fun, but I promise you'll have a lot more playing online races and with your friends, that's how the game is meant to be played.
It isn't all just running though, you have to jump over obstacles, slide under walls, swing over spikes (although it's absolutely hilarious watching a runner roll through the spikes), use boosts and a punch of pick ups. Golden claw is the best because you can literally pull someone back and make them go off screen and get an instant win. You can also block power ups when someone uses them on you, you're able to slide to dodge an attack or block them with a crate pick up, it takes a bit of practice.
You gain XP, unlock new maps, characters and skins. It's so fun and very addictive. For free, this was a bargain and one of my favourite games with gold over the past for years. If you missed it, buy it! It's worth it.
7.5/10
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