The Evil Within: The Assignment/The Consequence DLC (Xbox One)

The Assignment DLC is the first of two parts to the story of The Evil Within character, Kidman. It delves more into her part of the story, during the original game.

If you played Evil Within, you'll know that Sebastian's detective friends, Joseph and Kidman go missing quite often, this content tells Kidman's story.

Only two chapters long, the story starts with Kidman getting her briefing from the Mobius company, who want Leslie, as their new STEM project. Kidman's goals our different to Sebastian and Joseph's when they go to investigate the murder. The story starts from the beginning of Evil Within and spans the majority of the story.

The story intertwines with the original game and a lot of scenes will be familiar with you and you'll even cross paths with many faces you've seen before. The game is more stealthy too, in fact you don't even have a weapon and you have health you can only regenerate by standing still. You have to sneak and hide to manoeuvre through enemies, you can even lure enemies by whistling, but I didn't use it much, mainly because the one time I did, the Haunted came right to me and killed me.

The whole time it was dark, you couldn't see much but your torch was very handy. There was a cool way to dispose of enemies, by locking them in rooms, but it wasn't utilised much. The invisible enemies from the original game appear too, but your torch lights them up, so they're a lot more bearable this time.

The best part for me, was The Shade, or the Light Lady, as I called her. She was literally a tall pair of woman's legs in high heels, dressed in a sort of cloak and a spotlight acting as her head, if you were caught in her headlights, run for your life. She was well designed as creepy as fuck. She knew your name and muttered it as she looked for you, hearing her high heels slapping the ground and getting louder as she neared you. It was a panic attack waiting to happen.

Well designed, with new creepy creatures and new locations. Can't forget a new character to play as. It's great how we learn much more from the original story and get more depth.

2.9/5

The Evil Within: The Consequence

Part two of Kidman's story in the Evil Within concludes in another two chapter DLC.

There's not much else to go on here really, much of the same and lots of tie ins. One of the main things, is you lose your torch, and you're armed with flares. Flares can be thrown ahead of you to light up the rooms ahead. You can only have three active flares at a time.

The are some great sections including a running section where you're chased by a dark figure, stealth sections through groups of enemies that are blind but will come running if you make too much noise, an intense boss fight, a fight against two colones of Kidman and a final boss. Sound good?

One thing I have to talk about is the boss fight with the Light Lady. She was the best thing about it and the boss fight was so disappointing. It was super intense hiding from her as she stalked the room for you, but she died in three headshots. Come on, really? If you haven't seen the hidden Easter egg off the Light Lady and the Haunted having a secret rave party, you really need to YouTube it, it's fantastic.

Overall it was a good piece of content, just the disappointing/easy boss fights weakened it. Worth picking up for the cheap price it's valued at now.

3/5

War of the Monsters (PS4)

War of the Monsters released back in 2004, before being ported to PlayStation 4 in 2015. It's a monster fighting game that's an homage to Kaiju movies and a 1950s tone.

I used to play this with my cousin back in the day, beating the crap out of each other with giant monsters. It was so fun. Alas it hasn't aged too well, in fact, I'm surprised it's one of the few games that's been ported to PS4. It's not a bad game, it's just more infuriating than fun now.

The story, if you call it that, begins with an alien invasion, they saucers are stopped, but a radioactive liquid causes effects to creatures and causes them to grow in size and starts a war between the humans and the newly formed giant monsters. You're able to choose which monster to play as, and then stages follow where you fight other giants, sometimes more than one at a time.

The gameplay was so awkward, trying to control the camera and your monster was another fight in itself. If it hadn't been for the target lock, I'd never have won a fight. I had my fun in playing this game with a friend, not the CPU. I only had one controller, so that idea went out the window quickly. You can climb up buildings, pick up cars and other objects to use as weapons. You can also shoot projectiles that cost energy, which you can pick up, along with health pick ups.

There's lots of characters to play as and they have alternate costumes. You could play as a giant ape, praying mantis, a golem and many more. a bunch of maps to have your brawls on and there were minigames, in case fighting got boring. You had to spend token to unlock the minigames, outfits and new characters. You have to play a ridiculous amount though if you want that stuff because the token allocation is miniscule in comparison to what you need.

Unless you're playing with a friend, it gets old quick to be frank. At times it can be fun, but the awkward gameplay just makes it a chore. I hope PlayStation continue to port PS2 games to PS4, it's great to relive some old games, even if the nostalgia has worn off.

6.5/10

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (PS3)

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time originally released in 2003, and then the HD trilogy released in 2010. It was developed by Ubisoft.

I was at a friend's house the day they got this game, close to its release date. I remember this was the biggest game in the world, everyone wanted it, myself included. Just watching him run across walls and the platforming, it was amazing. It defined platforming for me and helped make it what it is today.

The story follows an unnamed prince, who's seemingly telling the player the story, acting as the narrator. The Prince finds a dagger, that allows him to rewind time. He is tricked into releasing the Sands, thus turning people into sand creatures. The Vizier who tricked the prince attempts to take the dagger, but the prince escapes and has to right his wrongs by preventing the sands he released from covering the world. He is aided by a young woman called Farah, but her loyalties are doubted with her true intentions unknown, the prince trusts her, for now.

Puzzles, platforming and fighting. The gist of the game. The platforming is stellar though, running up and across walls, wall to wall jumping, swinging from poles, shimmying, beam balancing. This is were platforming was introduced to me, many games use these exact sequences today and they're not much different from a 14 year old game. That's how ahead of its time it was. The puzzle rooms where fantastic, well designed, great camera shots to show the whole area. They were made so well.

The combat is ok, not on par with its platforming. You could block, vault enemies and roll away, but most rolls ended up with you attempting to vault over an enemy that pushes you back. The camera was awful during fights, you couldn't control it well and it caused a lot of cheap hits. You know when you're safe from enemies, because the prince will sheathe his sword in a small  scene. If a fight didn't go so well, you could heal yourself by drinking from fountains, the longer you hold down the button to drink, the more health you recovered.

You can rewind time. Need I say more? I never played a game that allowed you to do that before, it was unbelievable. Fell to your death? ⏪ a timed door closes before you get there? ⏪ Got caught with a cheap hit in a fight? ⏪ Cool right? Obviously you couldn't do it any time you wanted, you have a limited amount of rewinds, they eventually refill and finding collectables earns you more rewinds. You also got future visions, they literally gave you small scenes of things you were going to soon be doing. It was great, it was a teaser of what was to come.

The voice acting was ok, there was a good amount of humour throughout, giving a lighter tone. The music was really fitting and I enjoyed the story telling aspect. It was annoying however every time you paused being asked "Should I continue?", hang on mate, I need a piss! There were some really awkwardly placed save points, were you couldn't help but enter them as you tried to pass them. Near the end, there's a long platforming section were you can't fuck up or you'll have to do it all again, even worse, you can't rewind in case you mess up. There's a decent one on one boss fight at the end to make up for it though.

Without sounding weird I like how he loses more clothing items as you play... Let me explain, you ultimately lose your hat and shirt completely, he does it in stages though. Like the sleeves go first and such. He starts off as just a prince, but ends as a warrior. It's great character development and it's a visible transition too. Sounds a lot less weird now right?

This game introduced me to platformers, I'd never been so impressed with a game after seeing the wall running. When it came out, it was my top priority to get it. I saw my cousin complete the game, but only now I've played through the entire game myself and it was a fun experience, even fourteen years later.

7.8/10

The Evil Within (Xbox One)

The Evil Within is a survival horror game, developed by Tango Gameworks and released in 2014.

Detective Sebastian Castellanos, along with his compatriots, Kidman and Joseph are investigating a murder at a mental hospital, and soon find themselves in a world of destruction. After seemingly see the world falling to bits, Sebastian awakes and finds himself strung upside down on a meat hook, while a human-like beast is butchering bodies. Sebastian attempts to break free and escape, before delving into a world full of even more disturbing situations. It's one of the best video game opening sequences I've played in quite some time.

Sebastian encounters Dr Jimenez, who his looking for his patient, Leslie. Separated from his partners, Sebastian learns more information about what is happening around him through Jimenez, learning more and more about a powerful being, Ruvik. Dressed in rags and the ability to kill you in a instant, your best option is to run when Ruvik pops up. There's plenty more to fear though, Laura, a spider-like woman whose constant shrieking is enough to freak you out for life, never mind her introduction that comes out of nowhere. Sebastian, his fellow detectives, Dr Jimenez and Leslie must fight for their lives to escape the madness they find themselves trapped in.

The creepy tone is carried throughout, the screen is shortened due to the black bars at the top and bottom of your screen, restricting your view. Cinematically it looked good, but for gameplay it was hindering. There is a constant Resident Evil 4 feel to it, like the whole game is a homage to the horror classic.

You travel to lots of creepy environments, they looked great, they're intense to navigate through. You want to explore, and you should, there's plenty of secrets and you need to scavenge for ammo anyway. The gameplay is fun, the shooting can be difficult, but the actions scenes are great to play. You can stealth by throwing bottles as distractions and get up close for sneak kills.

You have a huge arsenal at your disposal, but ammo is very scarce. You can also find melee weapons that are only usable once and you have a crossbow with different types of bolts; freeze bolts, explosive, fire and a few more. I took a while to get into Evil Within, once I realised I couldn't shoot everyone in the head and played correctly, it was fun. The Haunted, the standard enemy of the game, can survive head wounds. The most effective way to kill, is to shoot them in the knee and drop and match on them when they fall. Matches are more damaging than bullets.... Seriously!

The creatures in this game are fucked up. Probably nothing compared to Silent Hill, they're pretty messed up too, but still. But I love that. I love the uneasy feeling you get from Evil Within, it's not something you get from many games. I was always looking forward to seeing the next boss introduction. The boss fights were always intense and well done. The Keeper is another stand out boss, a brute with a sledgehammer and a locked safe for a head? Did I mention he can kill himself to teleport closer to you? It's freaky and even worse as he respawns in front of you from the ground.

Survival difficulty is the normal difficulty, but you could get your ass kicked. If you were caught with a hit, you'd feel it with your health bar. You can upgrade your abilities, weapons and stock. Upgrade your stock for matches... trust me! You can also unlock safes by finding keys hidden in statues, you can get some wonderful items when you unlock them; upgrade gel, ammo, bolts, it's addicting unlocking them. You have a sprint bar, that's miniscule unless you upgrade it. The problem is, when you sprint, you come to a complete stand still when the bar empties as you recover, but you stop running before the bar runs down and can fuck you. The graphics were quite a let down too, ultimately they were good on the monsters and locations you went to, but the people looked like they came straight from the 360. This was one of the first games I played on the One and it was a disappointment.

I'm not a huge fan of horror games, I'd liked to be, but I'm often too scared to get into them. Evil Within is certainly one of the creepiest horror games around, but it's very entertaining and a really good game. I'm definitely getting the sequel and look forward to the next barrage of crazy enemies.

7.9/10

Life is Strange (Xbox One)

Life is Strange is an episodic adventure game, spanning five episodes. Developed by Dontnod Entertainment and all five episodes released in 2015. If you search LiS on the internet, you'll hear endless good things, I'm here to tell a different story.

The story focuses on Max Caulfield, a photography student at Blackwell Academy, in Arcadia Bay. While in the school's bathroom, a boy named Nathan enters, and seems aggravated, Max hiding behind one of the stalls out of sight. Another girl enters and has an argument with Nathan, it all goes badly and the girl is accidentally shot. Out of nowhere and unbeknownst to Max, she's able to (somehow) rewind time and save the girl, who turns out to be her childhood best friend, Chloe. They reunite and become friends again, Max quickly tells Chloe about her new found time powers. She is also experiencing visions of a storm hitting the town, looking to be the destruction of the town.

Characters are really the most important thing in a video game for me, well in story based games that is. After playing all five episodes, I'd say there were three characters I actually liked, none of them were the main two... Max was boring and plain. She was shy and desperately trying to be indie it hurt, then all of a sudden she grows some balls and thinks she can be a tough girl. It's poor development from my eyes. Chloe. OH. MY. GOD. I absolutely, fucking despise Chloe. That's not saying she's a bad character, she's just annoying as being asked "why?" all the time. She's a young adult, who acts like a spoilt five year old. Made a decision that doesn't benefit her? Acts like a bitch. Made a decision that benefits her? Acts like a bitch. Made a decision that helps other people? Acts like a fucking selfish bitch. You can not win. Bear in mind, this is a friend you haven't seen much of in years, and yet it's all your fault. She didn't try and make an effort over the years, it's just constant whining and you're given no reason to care for her, but the game forces you to be her friend.

The side characters are interesting and much easier to like. Even people you think you hate, you start to like later on. The story is good, it's engaging. My problem was, I was only engaged in episode one and five. The middle episodes were just filler to me, I just wanted to see how it all panned out. You'd think that rewinding power would be awesome, but it's a huge annoyance. There's a few times during the story were you having conversations that are about three parts long, you have to get all the segments right to carry on. You're given four choices for each, but if you pick the wrong one, you're in endless cycles of rewinding until you get it right. Even worse, I badly screwed up on a part, and what do you know? No more infinite rewinds. They're only there when you don't want them.

You're made to feel like your choices matter. There's a pretty drastic change, that's literally life changing. I was happy to proceed with the story, but Max wasn't, so she decided to undo everything I chose to do, and everything just went back to normal.... Are you kidding me? The game literally wastes your time and undoes your doing. Thanks, I really felt like I chose how the story played out. People can die in early episodes, who can actually make it to the end. That's cool, although I think it's literally one or two people.

The performances are really good, can't lie there. The music fits really well and the location is beautiful. I really wish I was given more freedom to just explore. You can roam fairly freely, but in a different type of game we could've explored more. I like the style of graphics, quite arty and comic book-like. The story even strongly ties in real life issues, and it can be pretty devastating how easily people's lives can be destroyed. Bullying, depression, drugs and even more heavy shit.

Later on in the episodes, there's a part where you hoping through older photographs of Max, so she can travel to that moment of the picture. That was easily the best part of the whole series. The end bad guy made no sense to me, I thought their motives were dumb and they tried so hard to be intense and scare you, but I just cringed. It's like the threw it out you to try and create a big twist, but it just made it even worse for me. You're also given a choice at the end, it's meant to be difficult and leave you pausing the game while you try and decide. Easiest choice I've ever made in a game, I didn't hesitate at all. Ultimately for me, this games tries a lot and fails most of the time for me.

This is not a bad game. contrary to everything I've said, it's really not. It's just not this masterpiece everyone is saying it is. Now we're getting a pointless prequel to cash in on its success. Great! A prequel full of characters I don't care about and I know how their story goes. Can't wait.

I think Dontnod Entertainment are going to be a big name developer in the near future. although I don't agree with it's acclaim that much, it's an amazing start for them. They also developed Remember Me, a game I can't wait to try and the upcoming Vampyr, which is one of the games I'm most looking forward to. They also have a second season of Life is Strange to come, but they aren't the developers for the prequel story.

I'll play Life is Strange's next season, hopefully it will be the masterpiece everyone said the original was.... but I doubt it!

6.5/10

The Club (Xbox 360)

The Club is a third person shooter, survival game. The Club itself, is ran by The Secretary, wealthy people place bets on the competitors on whether they will survive their visit. The 'gladiators' aren't volunteering to be combatants at The Club, they're fighting for their survival.

There are eight playable characters, two are unlocked through gameplay. Each character had their own back story and ending cinematic. My favourite was Finn, a gambling addict who clearly has a lot of debts to pay, as he's getting beating up in his opening cinematic. Each character has their own stats too, there health, speed etc. so you're best playing around and see who fits you best.

There are eight tournaments in total and each takes you across the world. Each level is really well designed, if I wasn't always timed in the events, I'd have explored and taken the chance to look around. You're taken to some great places to kill some dudes, prisons, abandoned ocean liners, bunkers, manors amongst others.

There are six modes throughout the game. Most are timed, but one or two are more relaxed. There's a survival mode, get to the exit as quick as possible, running laps of the map and killing for extra time and more. You can also pick which map and mode you'd like to play outside of the tournaments. The scoring system is fun, and it's really addictive trying to climb up the leaderboards. Unfortunately the multiplayer is dead, not surprising since the game is nine years old. I would've loved to have had some fun on the multiplayer, I think it could've been addicting.

The gameplay is really good, the running and gunning is very fun. People actually died when you shot them, none of this bullet sponging bullshit, if you shot a guy in the head, don't worry about him anymore. If you got pretty good at the shooting, you could drop everyone with one headshot. You have melee and grenades too, but I didn't use them much. There are hidden skulls that add to your score if you shoot them, but when you get to the finish line, you have to crash through the barricades to end the level.

The premise is simple, the gameplay is excellent and the characters are cool. When I looked up this game, I was surprised to see it had lots of 7/8s, but when I thought about it, it kinda made sense. All that was missing for me was the fun looking multiplayer, obviously it didn't get to gain any points from me for that. It's pretty addicting and plays great, but arcade style games have their limits for me and I can't play them forever, I'm a story guy, and there isn't much of one here.

I enjoyed my time with The Club, but I don't think I'll be renewing my membership.

6.9/10