Thinking that if I was going to write for a gaming website I had better pick up a ‘real’ gamer game, I did go out and purchase Dark Souls. Granted, it sat on my shelf for two days, the title staring at me like two great, glowing eyes in the darkness. The inexperienced gamer in me quavered at the prospect of it, though my friend, and primary gaming council, Benjamin was adamant that I play. I was barraged by friends warning me about the high death rate but armed with a lengthy email of advice from my own gaming Ben(jamin) Kenobi, and a can-do attitude I waded, undeterred into the blackness to face my fears.
I picked a Pyromancer (at the advice of Benjamin, of course), and played my way through the first level. I was astounded and impressed with the graphics, though having not played Demon’s Souls (and let’s face it, being rather incompetent) I was at a loss for how to even basically grasp the leveling system. Surprisingly, I didn’t find the dying over and over and over aspect to be a deterrent. Of course, I’m in my mid-twenties and even children’s games when I was a kid were difficult. I am finding myself quite enjoying the challenge of not being able to stroll through the levels.
That being said, SOME tutorial or explanation of any of the game play systems would be helpful, even if it was optional for newbs like me. I do understand that the learning curve for these games is steep and that they’re counting on the gamers not being…well…Katamari enthusiasts like I am, but I still think that the 360 users would have appreciated some explanation.
Having gone target-lock happy after Benjamin explained to me how to do THAT, I accidently killed a merchant and now have to start the game over from the beginning. I’m really ok with this as I feel more prepared to start now and I DO enjoy that once you do things like this, you can’t undo them, it’s very realistic, but also exceedingly annoying to a new player.I did enjoy the free-flowing battle system. It feels much more natural than, say, Assassin’s Creed. Though I am only starting on my Dark Soul’s journey, I am looking forward to continuing my quest and dying many more times in pursuit of gaming greatness.
I was told to review my favorite video game and a few came to mind, Katamari Damacy, Star Wars Lego, Podracing (PS2), Legend of Zelda; Twilight Princess… And I know what you’re thinking; these are all really easy games, and yes, they are. I’m a gamer who enjoys simplicity, but all of these games but the Zelda title lack what I’m really looking for in a game, and that’s a good, solid story.
I’m a fiction writer by trade and choice. The intricacies of a good story that’s told well are all I require to stay engaged in a game. I’m willing to sit through much faffing and fluff to get to the heart of the plot. This is the only real reason I can think for loving the Assassin’s Creed franchise as much as I do.
What first drew me in was the fantastically rendered settings. My mother being a bit of a Medici nut and passing that love of all things history on to me, I first saw my room mate playing it and was blown away by the stunning ability to go ANYWHERE in 15th century Florence/Venice/Tuscanny. I wanted to play, but (being a bit of a story purist that way) I was determined to play Assassin’s Creed I before I embarked on a quest with Ezio.
If you’re unfamiliar with the franchise, the idea of it is this; you play Desmond, a man who is using a machine called the Animus to use something called ‘DNA memory’ to relive the days of his assassin ancestors (So far Altaïr and Ezio), who are battling the templars. Basically, you’re playing a video game of a guy playing a video game. So within the first game you have two stories to handle, Desmond’s in our time (or near to it), and the one of his ancestor.
The main story line has to do with the age old battle of Assassins vs. Templars. The Assassins wish to have the world live by the code “nothing is true, everything is permitted”, the idea of which is that each person is responsible for his or her own actions and things like the law are illusions. The Templars believe that humanity needs a firm hand to rule it or life will dissolve into chaos. There are some interesting lessons to be learned here and I, for one, am still completely entertained by the idea of the anti-hero. The men you play as are not on the side of the law. They are, in fact, ‘bad guys’.
The historical context adds another twist. Setting itself up amidst real life political intrigue of the time, walking away from playing these games you feel smarter for having played them. Beyond that, it made me look up documentaries on some of the historical figures that play key roles and even purchase a couple of books on the subject. It’s a subtle, but effective learning experience. To give these men and women faces and voices and lives makes the whole thing more real. It makes history not seem like a distant memory, but something that you are living and creating yourself.
Assassin’s Creed II’s finale brings with it another layer beyond the two main story lines, one that is further explained through Brotherhood and Revelations but seems more enigmatic than ever.
Beyond the story and the game mechanics, it is genuinely fun to play. The map is relatively free, and though you can start to feel lonely if you spend too much time wandering off by yourself, there’s plenty to climb and to see. Breath-taking sights and delightfully gravity-less free running are key elements to the story. Without them, gameplay would feel stiff and incomplete.
Finally, as a woman, I sincerely appreciate the way this game handles women. Ezio is a bit of a ladies man, but the even the concubines you use to hide from and distract guards, are humanized. The women are allowed to be sexual without being sexualized. It is a breath of fresh air from a game about revenge and shanking guards from rooftops.
I will grant there are many things not right with the game mechanics in this game. It lacks certain elements, and has the ability to make be blindingly angry at the controls and sometimes the missions, but it holds a very special place in my heart. I have enjoyed watching Desmond and Ezio grow and I look forward to Assassin’s Creed III.
I want you all to think back to a time before Call of Duty 4 came along and revolutionised the online shooting game. Back when games like Goldeneye and Timesplitters were the big names in multiplayer shooting. Valve is attempting to recapture those days of yore with their new game, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, available on Xbox Live Arcade and PC. Before getting into the review proper I should state that this review is of the Xbox version of the game, not the PC version.
That’s right, Counter Strike aims to be a gimmick free online shooter. Everything newer players to online shooting games have come to expect has been stripped bare. That means no killstreaks, no perks, no create-a-class, no interactive maps… hell, you don’t even get a sprint button or the ability to aim down your sights. It’s just you, your gun and your team, against another team and their guns. And therein lays the beauty of the game. You don’t have to worry about an unbalanced roster of weapons, unfair killstreaks dominating the sky or the fact that some was a higher rank than you so they had better equipment. If you get killed, it is because the other person was better than you, making it a much fairer game than the majority of today’s top online shooters.
Due to the fact that this is an Xbox Live Arcade game, the graphics are not amazing, but they are functional. All the guns look as they should and the maps all have a unique visual style, which means that playing the game feels much less repetitive than if all the levels were say, desert based. It all sounds fine as well, with the guns each having a unique sound and your team giving accurate information during matches. My only slight niggle is that although the menu music is good and fitting for the style of the game, it does get repetitive quite quickly.
The decision to eliminate a single player campaign entirely is a controversial one but it allowed the developer to focus purely on the multiplayer, and in this regard I think it is a risk that has paid off. The game boasts four different modes each of which play significantly differently and have unique maps available to those game types. The mode which appears to be the most popular online is classic casual mode. This is a round based mode where players only get one life per round and each round is won by each eliminating the other team or completing the objective, either planting bombs or rescuing hostages. You earn or lose money for various actions and you use accumulated money to buy guns at the start of each round. This is a key mechanic as it means everyone starts on a level playing field and it brings in a risk reward factor as to whether you save up for the big weapons or buy frequent, mid tier weapons. Classic competitive is like a ‘hardcore’ version of casual and plays the same way except that friendly fire and team collisions are on and it is the best of 30 rounds instead of 10. These two modes can be played on eight unique maps, which initially does not sound like a lot but each map is so well designed you will not get bored quickly. Each map has multiple flanking routes and choke points, and the bomb/hostage sites are so well positioned on each map that it creates some truly tense standoffs.
Each map really has a unique style.
The other two modes are arms race and demolition. Arms race is the only game mode with respawns which gives it a unique feel. You start with a weapon and with every kill you move onto a new weapon until you reach the final weapon; the knife. The player who gets a kill with the final weapon first wins the game for their team. This creates an interesting dynamic as technically you are part of a team but you are playing to increase your individual score and provides an interesting ultimatum as to whether you stay and help your team but risk having kills stolen or you go lone wolf, putting yourself at greater risk but potentially for better reward. Demolition plays like a cross between classic casual and arms race, whereby it is a round based game, but instead of buying new weapons at the start of each round, you get given new weapons each round based on you kills in the previous one. These two games are fun in short bursts but not as addictive as the ‘classic’ modes. Arms race only has two maps in can be played on and demolition has six. However the maps are not as well designed as the maps on classic mode and can be a bit repetitive.
The game does a few other things to help set it apart. Any unfilled spaces in games get used up by bots, but when you die you can immediately take control of the bots on your team, meaning you are never out of the action for too long. Also if you thought that 10 and 30 round games sounded like a slog, the spawns on each map are only a maximum of 30 seconds apart which mean the game plays at a very high pace and rounds fly by. Lastly the game offers full button mapping, which is something I have been wanting to see in shooting games for ages, meaning you can assign any action to any button alongside individual vertical and horizontal sensitivity settings which really allow you to customise the game to your play style.
Hmm.. which instrument of death will it be this time…?
As much as I have been singing the praises of this game, and rightly so, it does have a few issues. When the game was first released it was full of lag and it was difficult to get into a game at all. Thankfully, touch wood, this problem appears to be resolved now and the connection is much more stable. Also the aforementioned button mapping, although a great feature, has an error currently in which if you assign anything to ‘X’ it means you can’t buy or pick up weapons or open doors which is a fairly big, but hopefully easily fixed issue. Lastly, although the AI of the bots is okay, it is still nowhere near that of a real player meaning it can be highly frustrating at times if you get caught on a team full of bots against a team of humans.
Ultimately, this games continued success is solely independent on the strength of its community. Thankfully, due to the well designed maps and balanced gameplay I can see people coming back to this game for months to come. It is a refreshingly old school approach to the online shooting game and one that any FPS fan should buy. So go on… what are you waiting for?
Never let it be said that BioWare doesn’t make you earn your happy ending. With the release of the Earth DLC for Mass Effect 3‘s multiplayer mode, BioWare has given players three new maps — Rio, an oil-drilling storage platform; Vancouver, and London, both reminiscent of the single-player locations — and a new difficulty level in Platinum mode. Not only are enemies more vicious and unrelenting, but each round starts to feel like a literal wave of enemies when Reapers appear alongside Cerberus troopers. If a team gets far enough, they’ll be facing all three kinds of enemies, Cerberus, Geth, and Reaper, and all the troubles that come with them. Picture if you will, the tactical precision of a Cerberus assault squad, aided and abetted by the heavy weapons of Geth Primes and Pyros as well as the mobile tanks and one-hit kills of Reaper Ravagers and Banshees.
To combat this combined threat, BioWare has also given three new weapons and six new characters, one for each class and all of N7 designation, so you know they’re the highest quality. The Piranha assault shotgun offers arguably the largest clip of all available while maintaining decent power. With the proper mods, bosses will drop before they’ve taken two steps. The Typhoon mini-machine gun pumps out an amazing amount of lead and ends low-level mooks very quickly. And the Acolyte pistol, with its charged shot, specializes in stripping shields, which makes it perfect for N7 Shadows and Furies, who rely on biotics, not ballistics, for damage.
And speaking of the new classes, if they look familiar, they are. N7 Furies are a reskinned Kasumi, Paladins are essentially Cerberus Guardians, and Shadows, Cerberus Phantoms. Their skill lists, however, make for creative kills, despite being filled mostly with known powers. The N7 Devastator Soldier’s self-named Devastator Mode increases accuracy, clip size, and rate-of-fire, making him a powerhouse on the field. He’s also the only class that has a missile launcher as a separate ability, as well as multi-frag grenade launcher.
N7 Fury Adepts have no need for weapons, as they are living weapons themselves. Not only do they have Throw and Dark Channel abilities but the Annihilation Field, a new ability that primes any enemy in range for a biotic explosion, making the Fury a truly fearsome foe.
N7 Shadow Infiltrators have the Tactical Cloak, of course, but what players are interested in are the two new abilities: Shadow Strike and Electric Slash. ME2 veterans will remember the former as one of Kasumi Goto’s abilities and best used against single enemies, especially in high-profile-target rounds. The Electric Slash is the new wrinkle that looks like a Phantom’s dodge but with a new Shockwave-looking mechanic, best used against groups. Theoretically, a player could start a Shadow Strike on a single target at the back of a group and follow up into an Electric Slash to cripple the rest before disappearing behind Tactical Cloak. Gives whole new meaning to the term “hit-and-run tactics.”
N7 Demolisher Engineers live up to their name with their Supply Pylon ability, which grants for its duration extra shields and full reloads of ammo and grenades for nearby allies, a useful feature considering the Demolisher’s other abilities are both grenades. The Arc Grenade, like the Arc Pistol, creates a localized EMP burst that depowers all shields and barriers, while the Homing Grenade does exactly what it says on the tin, causing massive damage for its unlucky recipient.
N7 Paladin Sentinels were given, in addition to the usual fire and ice attacks, a full-body omni-shield, which initially reminded me of the former Shadow Broker’s shield during his boss fight, a shield that you can mod to spit ice or incendiary effects upon opponents. The shield itself is very handy against frontal assaults. Properly modded, it could conceivably stand against heavy troopers like the Ravager or Geth Rocket Launcher. But as it is just a frontal shield, players can still be flanked, so pay attention to your sides. And with the shield as the Paladin’s heavy melee, their Energy Drain ability is a more viable choice. Draining an enemy’s shields and then smacking them with your shield makes quite the devastating one-two punch.
Finally, N7 Slayer Vanguards have, besides their Charge skill, an ability called Phase Disruptor, which takes half their barrier and fires it as a tight-beam laser blast, devastating anyone in its path and looking extremely cool while doing so. Their other new ability, the Biotic Slice, actually looks similar to the Shadow’s Electric Slice with more power behind it. It’s the same Shockwave ability, just on a different character with the power cranked up. All in all, the Slayer looks to be dangerous at any range.
So, what are your thoughts on the new DLC? Do you have a favorite character, weapon combo, or map? Maybe you have a build you want to share. Let us know in the comments section down below, and don’t forget to follow us on Twitter , and Like us on Facebook.
Impulse buys. We’ve all experienced them. You picked up a game and after looking at the cover you’re instantly drawn into the game and throwing your money at the seller. Those pesky people at Steam had advertised Lone Survivor as I was aimlessly searching through for some cheap games. I had heard nothing about it, seen nothing of it apart from the image that was on the page above the ‘Purchase’ button.
Lone Survivor is a survival horror game by Jasper Bryne. A comic book/pixelated game, graphically; it reminded me something that could perhaps be a contender against the Scott Pilgrim comics. The character you play as, referred to as ‘You’ but who I swiftly named Steve, has been trapped within the city as an outbreak of monsters has happened. The basic core of a story involving a character being trapped within their city during an outbreak or some form of disease is not exactly a new one to the gaming world and one that’s been told more times than Cinderella losing her shoe. Still, I started the game with a neutral opinion on it and jumped into the horror that it was no doubt about to deliver.
I really liked the character ‘You’ (aka Steve) – the comments on things as they explored the city were amusing and I slowly got more interested into their mental state. There are several times throughout the game where Steve has a blackout and enters a dream where you can encounter other people who will play tricks on what you (the player) believes is true. It’s a thin twisting layer that sits nicely on top of the basic story that I was previously talking about but it wasn’t something that pulled me right into the game and kept me hooked. I constantly found myself getting distracted and/or fed up with playing Lone Survivor after a few hours but yet I found myself returning to it later on in the day to play some more, but what had a hold of my mind that I had to carry on playing it?
Two things struck out to me as being executed and put together really well for the game, much like Irn Bru and a Scottish person, was the sound and visuals. I enjoyed playing on the pixelated graphics of the game and I was surprised that even with the constraint of chance for cinematic cut scenes, the hallucinations and the blackouts were done really well. With a black screen, I was instantly unsettled and wondered what monsters was going to pop up in front of me or where I would be. With eerie music being played while you were walking coming to a sudden halt to have vicious outbreaks of sound as your character blackouts – you can’t put in a bad word on how well they’ve brought these two elements together to provide a starting point to a decent horror experience to the player. Unfortunately, I felt the monsters let the game down due to them not exactly adding to the suspense that was starting to be set up with the visuals and sound of the game. The monsters didn’t pose much of a threat to me as I could easily sneak past them or kill them with a few bullets and nor did they jump out at you like any other horror game would have thought to have been second nature. There was a lack of diversity with the monsters as well. With all due respect, each respective type of monsters got progressively harder to kill off but with only two main types of monsters and the same number of bosses – the challenge of this game didn’t really lie with the monsters coming to attack you in the middle of the night but relied more on your survival.
With limited supplies on food and ammo at hand, it’s a difficult time to try and get going with your weekly shopping when you have to remember about the monsters patrolling the hallways and streets. As with any post-apocalyptic game, the supplies are scarce. Surviving on cheese and crackers isn’t exactly agreeing with your stomach, batteries are running low on your flashlight, ammo is almost gone – where do you go?! Lone Survivor has the answer that perhaps isn’t something that you should rely on whenever this does inevitably happen in real life – popping pills. Three types pills are at your disposal in Lone Survivor – red, green and blue – each with their own perks, so to speak. One will provide you with an instant lift and keep you on your feet and no side effects from it. The other two could potentially land Steve with some extra ammo or batteries being delivered out of thing air but they cause drowsiness and give Steve some really messed up nightmares. This is where Lone Survivor starts to play tricks and gets your mind working overdrive. What is real? Is this person really there and if so, am I actually speaking to them. What is that person trying to tell me?! Progressing through the story some more, when you do cross someone that becomes your friend, I was sitting there asking myself “are they real, is this happening?” for a good while. Known as The Director, you can go to his apartment and visit him to get those precious supplies, sometimes free although he does like to trade for those Sleepy Cat comics he so desires.
Although you have a person helping you on the supply side of things, Lone Survivor doesn’t directly hold your hand through the game. Without checking the radio and diary situated in your room on a regular basis, it’s easy to become lost and confused on where you’re meant to go. Thankfully, with a bit of an annoying save system, you will be visiting your room often enough to be kept in the know. I saw the small matter of saving my game a bit of an arduous task. Having to sleep in your own bed to save your progess, I often found myself making minimal progress with the game in between saves. It felt like I was taking a few baby steps before taking a bit of a leap back when I thought I best go save the game. Whenever I tried to go that little bit extra before returning to the apartment, I would be killed off and have to start from my previous save – somewhat of a pain in my butt when I had just found the place I needed to go. With Lone Survivor being a 2D side scrolling game, it can be a bit of a difficult task to try and navigate your way through the environment. Thankfully, they’ve met you halfway and provided you with a map but, the constant checking of the map to ensure you’re on the right path or in the right room is a hassle in itself. As I have already touched upon, I was often finding myself wanting to turn off the game and do something else and I reckon these played a factor towards that.
In saying that, even though I have identified some negatives about the game, Lone Survivor is an enjoyable game to complete over the course of a weekend, especially if you’ve picked it up cheap in the Steam Summer Sale. With various endings to the game depending on what pills you’ve been taking more of (yes you will become a drug user throughout this game just don’t do it in real life kids!), it has the potential sitting there for some replay value for those who wish to go back through it again but after my first play through, I didn’t feel like the game had left any impact on me to make me want to back through it again. Perhaps this could be a different story in a couple of months but we shall see.
Lone Survivor stands well as a survival game however it does lack some of the horror aspects that I was hoping to get from playing it. Where the visuals and sounds do the game justice, the elements of enemies and a bland and predictable story didn’t deliver for me and accumulate to what could have been a real gem of a game. Because of that, I give Lone Survivor a 6.5 out of 10 – definitely a buy at a cheap price for an fun game but not one that I would be pouring my money at.
Spec Ops: The Line is a game that many people and perhaps you have passed off as a “generic shooter” and by all means. Yes it has guns, it has fire fights and third person perspectives on the aiming but Yager Development have made this game so much more than that and I’m going to tell you why.
I’m suspecting that most people reading this have only heard of Spec Ops in the past few months what with the demo going live and trailers gracing our computer monitors however, I have been waiting on this game for around two years. After first setting my eyes on screenshots of the game, I was drawn to something – the sand. This was something that was fresh and new to see in a shooter game and I feel that point still stands today. The backstory to Spec Ops: The Line is that an evacuation process was underway when Colonel Konrad defied his orders in an attempt to save more people from the sandstorm that was about to hit Dubai. It has been six months from that day and two weeks ago, a distress call was heard from Konrad himself. This is where our story begins when you play as Captain Martin Walker and accompanied by Lieutenant Adams and Sargent Lugo, the three of you are sent on a mission to find Konrad.
With Dubai being half buried by sand, Spec Ops definitely has that post – apocalyptic feel to it, more of which I will go into later, but was an eerie setting to play through. No guns being fired. No shouts from the enemies (not yet anyway) but just the sand, wind and Lugo giving his normal comedic comments about the mission in a light-hearted fashion as we walked through the devastation that had been caused by the sand on Dubai. When the fire fights did start however, the gun mechanics were solid and using the cover based system was easy to dip in and out of cover, picking off enemies as you went and using the team command controls to pick off snipers from afar. So far, Spec Ops was living up to its expectations in my eyes. The first real ‘Wow’ moment for me came when you were told to shoot out the windows of an abandoned bus that was lying lopsided above the heads of three enemies that you had come across on your travels into the city. Thankfully, the bus had filled up with sand over the six months so by shooting out the windows, you made the sand your friend and kill off enemies. Now there are many more moments like these where by you can use the sand to your advantage by killing off enemies however, I felt that I had that annoying older sibling relationship with the sand – you love them but there are days where you want to punch them in the face. As you would expect being out the desert, sandstorms can come at any time and boy are they a pain in the ass! Even trying to find where that last line of bullets came from is a challenge and don’t get me started on trying to navigate your way through it. You can latterly only see what’s in front of you when you’re about five steps away from it but I think it’s a feature that Yager have implemented well and brings in something new not just for the game but for the genre as well.
Survival is a theme that I notice to trend through Spec Ops. Not just with the sandstorms that I’ve mentioned but in other aspects of the game as well. The devastation that the sand alone has caused to Dubai is apparent but, I found that Spec Ops held nothing back in regards to showing the suffering and violence of the destruction that you yourself are causing on Dubai. As opposed to the game title, Spec Ops has tried to pry itself away from the pre-cut mould that shooters are inevitably becoming linear experiences for gamers and they’ve done this by forcing you to choose on several occasions on the outcome of the problem that you’re faced with. Now it’s not a case of “what gun should we use to kill the horde of men that’s due to come our way any second now”, it is life or death decisions. With other shooters that I’ve played in my 15+ years of gaming, it’s always a case of “run, shoot, kill and repeat” but not with this one… oh no! Spec Ops makes you suffer the consequences by displaying to you what happened as a result of your decision. Whether that is the loss of what could have been a vital ally, the havoc that you’ve caused with that mortar kit – I could go on. I genuinely felt guilty for my decisions and even felt my mood dip a little (I did have a break to watch Finding Nemo before going back and playing it again!) Not only is it visually you see the harm that you’re causing but within the team itself you can see that your decisions are having an impact. Adams and Lugo will frequently have arguments between themselves about what they should do or should have done before Walker gets them focused on the mission again. This was another aspect that I loved about Spec Ops – giving the characters emotions and a bit of depth to them. Each character is interesting in their own right. I found that Lugo was by far my favourite due to his humour that he brings with him throughout the game and his one liner. Whether this is down to the fact that I am part of the more emotional side of the human race or not – there’s no denying that Yager have no held back with portraying the horror of being part of the military.
As the story continues, I began to feel myself thinking on the various outcomes of the game itself as one normally would however as soon as I felt myself get like that, the game drew me back in by basically going “Oh yeah remember you have people to kill” which I’m glad it did as after playing through the entire game, the story could have potentially been predicted however this didn’t leave me in awe at the ending of a fantastic game.
Spec Ops was everything that I had wished for plus more and was well worth the wait. After essentially doing nothing but play this as soon as I bought it, completing it was just the beginning as I was more than ready to dive straight back in and see what would have happened if I had gone the other route on my options. By playing through it on normal difficulty, there were times where I felt “should I bump up the difficulty as I’m finding this a bit easy” whereas other times I was like “well thank Christ I didn’t bump it up earlier” which, I would say was somewhat of a good standard but could have ironed out the creases a bit better to provide a consistent difficulty.
I can assure you that Spec Ops: The Line will provide you with an experience that you will not forget in a long time but it can still pack a punch as well providing you with good shooter action! With very little to criticise about Spec Ops and being respectful in the fact that they have concentrated on ensuring that the single player side of the game was more of the attraction as opposed to the multiplayer, I would have to give the game a 9/10 for providing a solid and unforgettable play through that lasted from beginning to end.
