This week, nothing much happened in term of major events that will actually matter in the future, but there was plenty of interesting stuff that happened. First, I’ll look at my predictions to see if anything I said was correct. Octodad sadly did not get a PS4 release date, and from what I counted, only two indie games were announced for the PS4, and neither of them were on Steam. However, my prediction that Iwata would say please at some point was nearly correct, as Masahiro Sakurai did during the Smash Bros Direct. Anyway, we’ll get to next week’s predictions later, time for a news round-up.
Yes, okay, I did do a retrospective on Hotline Miami because of the Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number trailer, but I’m pretty sure I was forced to do it by the soundtrack of the trailer. Wrong Number seems to be taking everything that was fantastic about the original game and simply expanding on it, rather than just doing what popular games are doing and tweaking the gameplay to be more like that. The story is also looking to be just as engaging as the first game, with Richard the Chicken coming back to presumably give us more morally challenging questions and ‘The Fans’ killing minor gangs after being inspired by Jacket from the first game. It’s gonna be incredibly interesting to see how it plays out.
Another trailer released this week that immediately piqued my interested was the new trailer for Wolfenstein: The New Order. Firstly, it involves the killing of footballers, which will be a handy WebM/Gif to throw around when the World Cup is on. Secondly, it looks like a first-person shooter that threw away all of it’s inhibitions and just wants to be one hell of a fun game. It also helps that they have full focus on what is apparently a 15-hour or so single player campaign with some genuinely fantastic character design. Crazy Nazis are obviously not the most unique of characters but the two we’ve seen, Deathshead and Frau Engel, are both so brilliantly written and performed I don’t care. This game is deinitely one to look out for, and I’m excited.
Now, it’s not much of a secret that I’ve been incredibly hyped for the new Godzilla movie ever since it was first announced to be in the works. This trailer did nothing but cement my hype, and I am definitely looking forward to seeing it on the big screen in May. This trailer gave gave us a solid glimpse at the MUTOs and what appears to be another brand new monster which seems to be snake-like, and doesn’t even look like the dead kaiju that was seen in the original trailer. While I still think they need to do a public trailer dubbed with the Oppenheimer speech, the trailers have still been brilliant and, unless the ruin it with some sort of romance subplot like most over movies, it’s all gonna be about Godzilla, which it needs to be.
Today wasn’t particularly big on the news front, and it was mostly just trailers that were of interest. There was another ‘reveal’ of Epic Games’ new free-to-play 3D Don’t Starve Fortnite which I didn’t really care about, but that was it. Still, all the trailers I’ve highlighted today were great, and did nothing but excite. I can now also confirm that I have pre-ordered WATCH_DOGS, partially because I’m really interested in it and partially because the incredibly rocky road this game has been on has to lead to somewhere, and that my review for it will either be on the 2nd or 9th of June, depending on how much I get done in the first week or so. I will now leave you with my predictions: Minecraft for PS4, Vita and Xbox One gets a release date, Firaxis’ new game is an XCOM for PC, PS4 and Xbox One and PAX has a load of indie reveals.
In light of a very good trailer being released recently for a game in no way related to Hotline Miami at all, I decided to look back on one of the best indie games of the past few years. It’s not exactly a secret that Hotline Miami is filled with ultraviolence, pixel art and all of the drugs in the world, but there many things which allow the game to rise just above being bloody fun, as well as allowing Dennaton’s Cactus and Dennis to sit at the big boy’s table in the cafe. Let’s just get it out-of-the-way first, yes I know that Hotline Miami has one of the best soundtracks ever, and no that will not be brought up again.
Okay, I lied, but it’s very difficult to ignore. The soundtrack of Hotline Miami is composed of many songs from a selection of unknown artists such as CoConuts, M.O.O.N. and Scattle. Every single bit of music in the game raises each stage in the game to another level, especially Scattle’s Flatline. which is pretty much the only thing which makes Trauma tolerable. It’s been stated by the guys at Dennaton that people have just been sending in their music to be used in the sequel without them having to pay any royalties because the game’s soundtrack had that much of an impact. Also, if it’s any indication, the new trailer for Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number basically confirms that it will top the original game, significantly.
Now, something that isn’t universally agreed to be fantastic is the graphics, or rather ‘art style’. Now, objectively, the game basically looks like a more modern 16-bit game, which by AAA standards is pretty pathetic. However, the art style is one of the major parts of Hotline Miami that separates from other games. The way the game is presented, and the way it looks during gameplay, just makes you forget that this game looks about fifteen years old. If Sonic 3 was released in 2014 and cited as a brand new experience, people would scoff at it, but Hotline Miami came out just over a year ago and people love how it looks. Presentation is key.
Now, after all that pointless stuff that doesn’t help a game be a good game, let’s continue that theme by talking about the story. It goes without mentioning that this game deserves it’s M rating, and no matter how they could’ve cut it, there was no way this would ever be T rated. If this game was in full 3D, this game would be banned, especially when compared to an actual banned game like Manhunt 2 which would pale in comparison to a version of Hotline Miami in a 3D AAA engine. Now, obviously a lot of this stems from the absolutely brutal violence, drugs and swearing, but it doesn’t help that this game has one of the most twisted and dark stories in recent memory.
Without wishing to spoil anything, the game deals with hallucinations, assassinations, gang culture and exploitation of women, which is somehow handled better by a game which basically has the unique selling point of ‘kill anything’ than a game which tries to be all serious and gritty. While not voiced, the dialogue is very well written and in some cases makes the player directly question their own actions, something that only Spec Ops: The Line had managed to do before, at least in my opinion. The story is seriously one of the reasons you should check out Hotline Miami, because it screws with your head, makes you question your own morals and is overall pretty damn fantastic.
Okay, so now I’ll actually break the trend and talk about the gameplay, and this game has brilliant gameplay. While you may be forgiven for trying to play this game by stealthily planning every single little thing you do, you will definitely be better off just throwing away your inhibitions and exploding through every level like the drug-fuelled psycho that you are. You could argue that Hotline Miami is almost entirely a twitch game in a similar vein to Super Hexagon with the amount of quick thinking and constant restarting you need to do. I have never seen someone play through the entire game without dying at least once, and if somebody has, please refer me.
Another thing that adds a hell of a lot of replayability, other than the levels being explicitly designed for it with all the scoring the game has, is the selection of secrets the game has to find. Alongside various masks, a subject we’ll finish on, you can also find various letter pieces, which lead to something rather interesting that I don’t want to talk about. Now, the aforementioned masks play a huge role in the gameplay, with each of them offering different abilities. The ‘canonical’ chicken mask offers no bonuses but others offer abilities such as lethal doors or killing punches, allowing you to use different tactics in each level.
But, the time comes to actually say if the game is worth your time or not, and it certainly is. It’s currently free for European PlayStation Plus users, so I highly suggest you go and download it now if you own a PS3 or Vita, and it’s not exactly expensive to buy, being only £6.99 on Steam at full price, with most sales bringing it down by at least 50% nowadays. With the trailer for the game that is completely unrelated to this game being released this week, which I will be looking at on Friday, as you’d expect, it was a perfect time to discuss Hotline Miami, and I hope you find it in your heart to punch everybody in the face to death.
There really isn’t a review tagline that I could use for this review which wouldn’t spoil the DLC or the main game, so I opted to use a Queens of the Stone Age reference to make it easier. Anyway, I digress. BioShock Infinite was a pretty fantastic game, and if I arbitrarily ranked all of my favourite games of 2013, Infinite would be around third. I was happy to purchase the season pass after the reveal of Burial at Sea, knowing what I’d be getting, and after enjoying Burial at Sea Episode 1 and not really playing Clash in the Clouds at all, I was very excited for the next episode of Burial at Sea. It also deserves to be called out as Irrational Games’ final ever release, so let that linger around.
Burial at Sea Episode 2 begins immediately following the events of the first episode, sort of. It’s hard to explain without ruining a pretty awesome segment, although it doesn’t really affect the overall story in any way, so we’ll just leave it at that. You take control of Elizabeth, the first female playable character in the entire series, as she goes on a great adventure filled with death, horror and weirdness. It’s basically what you’d expect if you played the main game for more than twenty minutes. Anyway, one of the biggest factors in this DLC is it’s story so I do not want to go into any specifics, as minor as they may be, so I’ll just say that players of the whole series will probably appreciate the DLC a bit more but new players will be brought up to speed with a rather helpful ‘Previously on BioShock’ video.
Okay, so now I’ve finished the incredibly undetailed synopsis of the frankly quite brilliant story of Episode 2, let’s get into the meat of any video game, the gameplay. Now, I liked BioShock Infinite’s gameplay, although it certainly had issues. Being limited to two weapon slots is pretty much terrible, especially in a fairly unrealistic game, and aside, from any skyhook-based battles, it felt like a bit of a generic arena shooter. However, Episode 2 does quite a lot of things to get rid of most of the issues. Much like in Episode 1, there is a weapon wheel that stores every weapon, which is just fantastic and helps change-up the gameplay a bit more than holding onto only two guns at once, one of which is probably explosion-based. Also, the overall combat system definitely favours using stealth, and the new Crossbow weapon helps that, with various bolt types to help stay hidden or get out of a bit of bother silently.
Also, the game introduces two new vigors, although I don’t want to explicitly state their function. However, I will happily say that one of the new vigors stayed as one of my equipped vigors permanently, while the other was a cool gimmick that I didn’t find all too useful. You can also find vigor upgrades in hidden areas rather than having to buy them, which is a change I rather enjoyed as a significant boost in a vigors capability should be something that you should discover by exploring, rather than being something you just buy at any old ‘Veni! Vidi! Vigor!’ machine. I think one of the upgrades could be considered gamebreaking as it does make the combat significantly easier, but I don’t think it is too useful when you get found so it’s pretty much fine.
Apologies, but I am out of non-spoiler images. Anyway, the story and gameplay are both pretty damn good for this piece of DLC, I’d even say fantastic. It should be getting a nine or possibly even a highly prestigious ten. However, there is one quite major thing that prevents it from getting the fabled perfect score, and that’s the fact it runs on the PS3 like if the PS3 used the GameCube’s GPU. In one fairly major section I kept getting massive lag spikes, constantly, and it completely destroyed any chance of getting through a combat scenario stealthily. I don’t know what it was like on 360, and PC performance is basically on you, but it’s absolutely unacceptable. Yes, the game is very pretty for seventh-generation hardware, but the main game didn’t have drops as major as those. It left a slightly bitter taste in my mouth, so it’s a good job the DLC is overall really damn good. My final score for BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea Episode 2 is an
8/10
Sorry if I seem to be turning into Eurogamer, but with its performance issues on the PS3, it is impossible to give this a nine or above, and the DLC is too good to get a seven or below. Performance issues aside, Episode 2 is completely worth your time with its gameplay improvements and it’s amazing story. It brings tremendous closure to the series, and I would like the thank Irrational Games for bringing us two fantastic games and two fantastic pieces of DLC. I hope Levine’s next project is as special as this saga.
When I decided to schedule my blog posts, I falsely believed that every week will have news as shocking and as interesting as the Oculus VR acquisition by Facebook last week, and while there was a fairly big news story this week, it certainly didn’t explode like the acquisition did. However, there was some other things that happened this week, as well as a couple of new trailers. I will also talk about Mercenary Kings too, as I’ve had an hour or so with it and I want to talk about it without reviewing it in full. Now, with that said, the big news story of the week.
As you may of heard, Brendan Eich is essentially anti-gay, and has been known to contribute money to anti-gay charities. Now, while that is just minority suppresion because why the hell not, it’s not why Eich was in the news. Yes, to the great joy of all Firefox users now that they can’t be branded homophobic by stupid people anymore, Eich stepped down as CEO of Mozilla. Some may agree with his beliefs, many will think he is an archaic idiot. However, hopefully we can all agree that people are happy that others will now shut up about Firefox users.
You can read Mozilla’s official blog post about Eich’s resignation here.
A rumour developed recently that 4A Games were working on a next/current-gen compilation of their two Metro games. This rumour was also supported with some presentation slides and mock-up box art. However, on the 31st of March, Deep Silver posted on the Metro series’ website, confirming that they working on the remakes. I gained a tremendous amount of respect for Deep Silver after they confirmed the leaks were legitimate, and they even mentioned they could’ve just went with the standard “not commenting on rumours” stance. I am very much looking forward to seeing what Redux looks like on the next/current-gen consoles. It’s also worth noting that this will be the first time Metro 2033 will be on PlayStation.
In other news, it has been announced that Pure Chess is being brought to PS4 and looks beautiful. It’s been a while since I was excited to play chess, but there you go. A new trailer was also released Always Sometimes Monsters, which looks like a cross between Hotline Miami, To the Moon and IMVU. The violence in the very chibi-looking world as actually very unsettling, and as the game seems to have many story branches, I’ll keep a very close eye on this project. I should probably also mention that Phil Spencer has been promoted to head of the Xbox brand, but I’m a vitriolic PlayStation fanboy, so why would I do that.
In the movie world, the big trailer, and I think the only big trailer, from this week was of course for Lucy. According to the incredibly unreliable synopsis featured on Wikipedia, Scarlett Johansson’s character Lucy gets used as a drug mule for the Taipei mob, but she accidentally absorbs the drugs and can now absorb knowledge instantly, move objects with her mind and doesn’t feel pain. Yes, this does mean that Johansson is playing a character that is more of a superhero than the actual superhero she does play. Also, Morgan Freeman has a role, because of course he has.
However, you all keep up with the news, so I want to talk about Mercenary Kings for a bit, as I haven’t played it enough for a review but I have played it enough to form an opinion. I went into Mercenary Kings expecting it to be a new age Metal Slug with customisation elements. But, this game should not even be mentioned in the same paragraph as Metal Slug, and I am technically insulting SNK right now. Mercenary Kings is actually a quad-directional shoot-em-up with scavenging elements, insultingly basic crafting and the worst level design I’ve seen for bloody ages. For a game which has a strong focus on its customisation elements, why the hell am I limited to two predefined characters that have four different colour palettes each. Oh yeah, and you can also rename them, that really make a whole lot of difference. It’s not like it would be hard to implement some sort of character customisation considering the game is basically the most stylised thing ever released.
Also, if having two predefined characters was so important, the character could have at least been interesting. Unless they were characterised in the pretentious Metal Gear tribute/rip-off codec sequences, which I skipped because a reference to a prolific series that doesn’t end is not funny, then they are essentially blank slate anyway so character customisation may as well be a part of it. Also, while we are at it, the gathering and crafting system is just poorly implemented. There isn’t any way of getting a steady stream of actually valuable resources like steel, which in turn means it’s irritating to actually create a decent weapon, which again turns into a system so pointless they may as well give you pre-defined weapons you can switch between on the fly. Don’t make me provide materials and money, especially when the gunsmith is meant to be part of your actual team/army/something or other. If the real army made each individual soldier provide metal for their guns as well as money for the crafting of them, nobody would sign up. Maybe Mercenary Kings was developed just to try to dissuade people from going to war, ironically.
I should probably finish up this rant before it turns into a review, but I would last like to go into a little bit more detail on the appaling level design I mentioned earlier. I still haven’t got passed the first area for reasons that we’ll get to in a minute, but the main level they use for most things in the first area is just a big open space with lots of doors that lead to random places, which in turn leads me to remember Fez, which had terrible level design but was at least very pretty. Now, I stopped playing Mercenary Kings after my second attempt at the first boss, because I really didn’t want to try again. The boss starts in what I assume is a constant position, and then wanders off when it gets bored and spawns in one of three other places, each of them being a pain to get to. There were also several instances where I searched every possible place, and found out that it can move while you are looking for it, which is bad design, and just plain stupid. In conclusion, buy Metal Slug 1, Metal Slug 2 or Metal Slug XX on PSN.
Anyway, I’ll see you guys in a few days for the Monday review, which wont be Thief again because I spent too much time trying to have fun playing Mercenary Kings. If I can get around to it, the review will probably be for Burial at Sea Episode 2. If not, I’ll just review One Finger Death Punch or someting. So, another week closes and another begins. My predictions for the following week are that Octodad gets a PS4 release date, Iwata says “please” at some point and twelve more indie games are announced for the PS4, with at least eight of them being on Steam already.
Think of a trailer in the past, say, ten years. In fact, think of a few. I am willing to guess that most people would think of Dead Island when asked this question, and so they should. The Dead Island reveal trailer was probably one of the greatest things to happen in 2011, and it deserved it, as the entire trailer just had everything right. Techland again did something similar when revealing Dead Island Riptide, and while it didn’t the godly levels of the first trailer, it was still pretty damn good. I always had a weird soft spot for Dead Island that I never fully understood, so I was incredibly excited when Techland announced Dying Light. They first provided a selection of pretty fantastic screenshots, and then followed those up with one of their famous cinematic trailers.
Backed by Woodkid’s Run Boy Run, which is incredibly fitting for a game that involves free-running away from zombies, the trailer marks what I consider the quickest time for a twist to occur, happening near the end where after all his effort, the guy ends up getting knocked out right by the supplies. However, Techland have a reputation for releasing generally hilarious gameplay trailers after the fantastic CGI reveal trailers. This is generally caused by appalling voice acting with super dramatic music in the background, creating a contrast that comes off as parody. I think the only character in the Dead Island series whose voice actor wasn’t completely awful was Sam B, and that was only because Phil LaMarr sounded like he was doing the macho black guy shtick ironically.
However, Techland actually completely turn this on this head with its Dying Light trailers. They began with the Lighting trailer, which somehow manages to be a really good game trailer while essentially being a tech demo. After that, they just went straight into giving out and showing demos for the game, which is something more developers really need to start doing more of. The other trailer they have released so far was the Humanity trailer which is the most recent new footage that we’ve seen of the game. The Humanity trailer was pretty much directed as well as the CGI trailers, which was pretty surprising. It also helped that the guy doing the voiceover wasn’t completely laughable, and was actually really quite good, so hopefully he is playing one of the main characters.
But hey, Dying Light isn’t just a collection of lovely trailers, let’s actually talk about the game. Even though it’s a cross-gen game, it is still pretty damn beautiful, and Techland are targeting 60 FPS at 1080p on both the PS4 and Xbox One, which is awesome. Zombie models are looking great, and hopefully there are enough unique models in the game to keep them interesting, and character models look nice too, and are very emotive when talking or giving a quest, which makes them seem a bit more human, unlike Dead Island NPCs that just stared into your soul, learning all of your sins. Also, unlike many games, the world looks amazing during daytime and nighttime, which is probably helped by the South American setting.
With all this talk about graphics and trailers, I need to digress and get onto gameplay. In the most basic of terms, the gameplay is like Dead Island and Mirror’s Edge, which is quite possibly one of the greatest gameplay merges I can think of. The free-running will allow for incredible chase sequences, supported by the ‘looking behind you’ mechanic, and I’ve always found the Dead Island combat charming. By the looks of it, the footage shown doesn’t use the analog controls that were part of Dead Island, but I hope the option is there as the analog controls were great to use. Also from Dead Island is the weapon crafting system, although it seems to be a bit more grounded this time. You can actually see on the electrified machete used in one of the gameplay demos that it looks wired up in a realstic way rather than just having a load of wire coiled around in connected to a battery taped on the handle.
Much like Dead Island, or rather Left 4 Dead which pretty much popularised the idea, Dying Light features a selection of special zombies, although they aren’t really unique as most ideas for special zombies have been used. Two of the ones you’ll see are the acid-spitting Toad and the massive tank Demolisher. Also, there is a special zombie type that only comes out at night, the Volatile, which will apparently render escape near impossible and the player will need to use their wits and various distractions to escape. These zombies form a part of one of Dying Light’s main focuses, the night sections, where you lose any advantage you have over the zombies. They become faster, more intelligent, can climb like you and are near unkillable. This all sounds great, and I really hope Techland manage to pull it off.
I have been looking forward to Dying Light ever since it’s reveal, and none of the released footage has put me off the game, even reinforcing my hype in some areas. With no release date set in stone yet, other than a fairly taunting TBA 2014, I will expect to see the game launch in about Q3, and most likely in August as nobody will want to compete with Destiny in September. Techland are definitely starting to become a develop people are starting to like, especially with the last Call of Juarez game getting a good response from critics and customers alike. Let’s just hope they can’t screw up a combination of Dead Island and Mirror’s Edge, but to be honest, that will be very difficult.
A lot of really big things happened this week. Well, one very big thing. One very big thing that basically destroyed the Internet for a couple of days. You know what I’m talking about, and we’ll get to that later. Other than that thing that happened this week, some other stuff also happened, including a selection of new trailers for films. There’s no point in pacing around the subject for much longer, so let’s get into the first big news of the week.
Yep, Facebook buying Oculus VR, an event that melted gamers everywhere, and for some reason pleased a load of other people who we were happy about it. When this news first came up, my reaction was “why”. There is no reason that Facebook should’ve bought Oculus VR, because Facebook are in the social networking market. But then you realise what Facebook makes most of their money from. Facebook is in the advertising business. They constantly give you the option to ‘promote’ your posts, for whatever reason, and you can buy ad space for your Clash of Clans ripoff. If Facebook keeps away from what Oculus VR are doing, this could be a great thing. More money to develop the Oculus Rift, better promotion and virtual reality will simply be a bigger deal. Of course, Facebook wont keep out of Oculus VR’s business, and the Oculus Rift will inevitably end up as the most futuristic advertising medium in the world, or as a peripheral for a social world which features the most futuristic advertising in the world. Basically, Facebook likes adverts, and hates innovation. Next topic.
April’s PlayStation Plus line-up has been revealed, and it’s pretty damn good month for both Europe and America. If you an inhabitant of the UK, like me, or the rest of Europe, you will be able to get your hands on Mercenary Kings for the PS4, Pro Evolution Soccer 2014 for the PS3, Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time for the PS3 and Vita, Hotline Miami for the PS3 and Vita and MotoGP 13 for Vita. If you are one of those people from the NTSC region, you’ll also be able to get Mercenary Kings for the PS4, alongside Tomb Raider and Borderlands 2 for the PS3 and Smart As and Pixeljunk Monsters Ultimate HD for Vita. Pretty solid month for everyone here, and with the Hotline Miami PS4 port recently confirmed, I would imagine the cross-buy extends to that too. However, I already bought Hotline Miami, so I needn’t worry. I really hope Microsoft can start making Games with Gold comparable, such as consistently having games like Sleeping Dogs available. With Saint’s Row 2 and Terraria being rumoured for April, they seem to be getting better again. Hopefully it starts up on the Xbox One soon so more people will download LocoCycle.
As I mentioned in my GTA V retrospective, I’m really interested in the universe of The Purge. I feel that the framework for the series is great, and the first film flopped because they focused on one rich family’s survival and nothing else. In The Purge: Anarchy, they seem to be going for a more citywide thing, and it looks like there will be numerous subplots following different characters. There are a couple of very intriguing aspects in the trailer. The first is the guy in the God mask, who is prevalent in both trailers, so I’d suspect he’d be a fairly major character. The other thing is the bidding scene at the end of trailer, and if they are doing what I suspect they are doing, it could really be a brilliant section of the movie. However, I will probably just end up watching it on Netflix as I doubt anyone I know will go to watch it at the cinema with me, so expect a review in about October.
Of course, that wasn’t the only trailer released this week, the most notable of course being the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot as produced by Michael Bay and starring Megan Fox. Yeah, this movie is going to be awful, and there is not really anything to convince me otherwise. First, you’ve got Megan Fox, who is essentially a 2010s version of those women from the 1930s who got one acting job and was terrible, except Megan Fox keeps getting jobs. Second, you’ve got the harbringers of infinite death who are apparently the turtles. Oh yeah, and the ‘woman fainting after surprise’ trope is the closing scene of the trailer. It can’t get any higher than a 5/10 purely because of that.
Alongside two movies about infinite death and horror, there were also a couple of other trailers released this week that I rather enjoyed. The first is a new trailer for Jupiter Ascending, from the something-or-other brothers that brought us the Matrix Trilogy. This film is actually looking pretty good, if I’m honest. The whole normal girl who is actually super-special plot is incredibly old but it’s a framework I’m willing to accept as long as the movie is good. Also, the brief appearances of Eddie Redmayne as the main villain were pretty damn fantastic. The other trailer that I feel is worth sharing is the new trailer for Edge of Tomorrow. Yes, sci-fi action was in full force this week. This film is starting to look actually quite interesting rather than being the Source Code copy it seemed to originally be. The action sequences look good, and hopefully there are plently of them, rather than scenes with Tom Cruise trying to be a serious actor. I’ll be looking out for both of these, but we’ll see what happens at the box office and what the reviewers think of it.
WARNING: This review contains fairly minor spoilers for the beginning of the game. None of the unrevealed powers will be mentioned, other than very brief functionality descriptions.
For a company that began with a Nintendo 64 game that nobody has heard of, Sucker Punch have indeed gone places. They started with the tremendously popular Sly Cooper, now handled by the also respectable Sanzaru Games, and then moving to the inFAMOUS series midway through the PlayStation 3’s life. The [PROTOTYPE] vs. inFAMOUS wars, presumably to decide who had the most irritating name stylization, was actually a fairly big deal. I was always on the side of [PROTOTYPE] because of multiple reason, mainly because it was more fun in general, if not a bit more stupid. Eventually, the sequels came out, nearly a whole year apart, in comparison to the week or so between the series’ first games. They were both much more level now, with inFAMOUS 2’s clear superiority over the first game, and I will fight you in the road if you disagree. After both of these games, we didn’t hear about either of the series until February 2013, where Sucker Punch revealed Second Son, to the delight of many people including myself. This is where the review actually begins, and we’ll start with a short video of me taking down a Mobile Command Center using two of the available powers.
The story follows Delsin Rowe, a member of the fictional Akomish tribe, which Sucker Punch invented to not offend any actual tribes apparently. A constantly snarky and fairly immature young guy, Delsin pretty much immediately becomes a better character than Cole. After spray-painting, a great mechanic I’ll discuss later, and then being nearly arrested by his cop brother Reggie Rowe, a truck crashes and three conduits escape. After trying to help one who gets stuck under the truck, Delsin gets used as a shield by a conduit named Hank Daughtry. Delsin grabs his arm, and his conduit gene is activated, revealing Delsin has the power of power absorption. Delsin mopes around for a few minutes, and then pretty much embraces them, unlike Cole who spent around an hour complaining about it.
Following a fight with Hank in a burning fish cannery, the most appropriate place for a superhero battle, Delsin escapes, meets the main antagonist Brooke Augustine, and promptly gets a shard in the leg. Delsin gets cured quickly due to his conduit abilities, but a load of other people don’t and Delsin and Reggie head to Seattle to absorb the power needed to cure the people of ‘shard in the leg’. Along the course of the story you’ll meet all of the escaped conduits from the start of the game, pick up some pretty kick ass powers and have a battle on the top of the Sky Needle, which sounds nothing but awesome.
I don’t really want to discuss the story in a lot of detail as there isn’t really much you can say without spoiling the other powers, but I will say the backstories for all three of the escapee conduits are incredibly well thought out and, most of the time, really quite tragic. Fetch’s is especially hard-hitting, especially when it brings up why Fetch seems to be so close to a specific person. However, I digress. An action open-world game needs great gameplay and world design otherwise what’s the point.
Firstly, world design. As shown above, Sucker Punch’s incredibly inaccurate version of Seattle is beautiful. The game’s graphical fidelity is top-notch, with a monstrous draw distance to boot. The game also runs at a lovely 1080p and a usually stable 30 FPS or above, although dips do sometimes occur, especially during district transitions and Karma Bomb moves. The HUD of the game is okay, but a bit messy, even if it does match with the overall aesthetic of the game, considering it takes place in the grunge capital of the world. I think the game would’ve benefited from on option to turn HUD elements off, as not only would it please the people who hate the HUD, but much better screenshots of the game could be taken.
As mentioned, the version of Seattle in the game is pretty much not really Seattle at all, save for the Sky Needle and a couple of other notable Seattle attractions such as the disgusting yet charming Gum Wall. However, considering that Empire City was basically just an adaption of New York City, and New Marais was basically just an adaption of New Orleans, I don’t really think it matters that much, unless you are a devout Seattleite and wanted the city to be an exact 1:1 replica. Neo-Seattle is also much more alive than Empire City or New Marais, with many more people wandering around and more cars driving around. The way they’ve got around having a day and night cycle, having time progress with story missions, is odd though, and it’s pretty irritating the endgame locks you in daytime mode, rather than nighttime mode where all the powers look cooler. A toggle wouldn’t go amiss.
However, ignoring all this graphics lark, which is pretty inconsequential when it comes to whether a game is actually any good or not, I need to bring up gameplay, an aspect which people never seem to particularly like when it comes to this series. However, I liked the fluidity of the previous games’ combat, even if the use of one power did get completely and utterly monotonous by the end of the game. Second Son pretty much solves the monotony issue my having multiple powers, each with their own varying strengths and weakness. Smoke is a great close range and melee power, and Neon is fantastic for sniping . The other powers are also varying, with one power allowing for more stealth based combat, and one allowing for more tank based combat.
Being able to switch between powers on the fly in the middle of combat allows for greater variance, and I tried to demonstrate that in the video. I began using Neon to take down some gang member and a few DUP soldiers and helicopters, used Smoke to get more up close and personal, and then switched back to Neon to do some more long-range stuff. The other powers allow for even more tactical changes, but as I’ve said, I’m not going into the other powers. Destroying Mobile Command Centers, as I did in the video, is probably the most prevalent side activity, and you’ll find yourself doing it a lot. There are also various side missions and collectibles, such as collecting blast shards, finding hidden cameras, finding secret DUP agents which was the worst side mission concept in the history of the universe, finding bigger cameras and doing stencil art, which is my favourite side mission. After picking a bad karma or good karma artwork, you’ll perform a few fills using the gyroscope function in the Dualshock 4. It is inexplicably satisfying, and all the designs are fantastic, giving you an added incentive to play the mission again in the opposite karma level just to see all of them, alongside all the other boring stuff like doing different missions based on your karma level and getting highly contrasting power extensions based on your karma level.
The final thing that needs to be discussed is whether it’s worth your time and money. It’s certainly worth your time, there really isn’t any doubts about that, but whether it’s worth the money is a whole other matter entirely. One 100% playthrough of the game took me about 16 hours. That’s all of the story missions, all of the side missions and all of the collectibles. The game is basically designed for two playthroughs so the whole game will take you about 32 hours to completely finish. I paid £40 for the game, and I would say that the game is pretty much worth that much, but I only got that price due to a voucher code, and without one, you’ll probably end up paying £50 or more, and I don’t think really any game, ignoring collector’s editions, can justify being that price, even games that can have a good amount of hours added on to Second Son’s playtime. All that being said, however, I didn’t pay £50 so that makes no difference to me. This is not a perfect game, it’s not 2014’s The Last of Us or 2014’s Taz Wanted, and it more than likely wont end up being game of the year. However, it’s a damn good game that is completely worth your time. My final score for inFAMOUS Second Son, even though I hate decimal scores, is an
8.5/10
The game’s overall story is solid, and the game really shines in its character design, which is far above the last two/technically three games. Both of the endings are pretty good, with the good ending being quite beautiful and the evil ending being a bit menacing, to say the least. Gameplay is also vastly improved thanks to being able to use multiple powers, but if Sucker Punch continues the series, they will have to keep power absorption aspect central, as going back to one power will be a major step backwards. The only way this can be done is by using Delsin again, or my introducing another character with absorption powers, and it’s hinted numerous times that Delsin is the only conduit capable of it. Graphically, it’s clear that this is the best looking game on either the PS4 or the Xbox One, rivalled perhaps only by Ryse: Son of Rome which is a short, linear game and isn’t really comparable. What lets the game down is it’s length compared to a lot of other open world games, and some really awfully designed side missions such as the aforementioned secret agent missions which are bloody tedious and are in no way enjoyable. The game also gets marked down for having a story important piece of content detailing the events after inFAMOUS 2 as a pre-order bonus, which I didn’t get to play. There is, however, a really quite nice metagame which takes place inside the game and online, which is still ongoing and more missions will become available weekly, which sounds familiar doesn’t it [PROTOTYPE 2]? It will be interesting to see if Radical’s “incredible project” brings back the great superhero game wars of 2009, and honestly, I hope it does. I want more inFAMOUS and I want more [PROTOTYPE].
Last year, I was eating out, and the reveal trailer for Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag was released. Blackbeard being one of the first thing’s you see, confirming the games Golden Era of Piracy setting, and I got excited. Today, Assassin’s Creed: Unity was revealed, and while I wasn’t eating out, I was still pretty excited by the trailer.
The first thing you’ll notice is that they didn’t bother giving the game a number. To be honest, pure subtitling is probably the best option for the series considering it’s chronology makes no frickin’ sense anymore. The next thing you’ll notice is France, goddamn France. It’s been a long time coming but after being stab West Asians, Italians, the British and some Americans, we can finally stab the French. Taking place in France also means we will go back to Assassin’s Creed IV world design consisting of impressive, huge architecture, a welcome return.
As seen in the screenshot above, Notre Damn is beautifully replicated in the game, and whether we’ll see more inner building exploration like what was in the Italian Renaissance games is yet to be known, although those navigation puzzles were great fun. Something different, however, is the Parkour Up and Parkour Down buttons. It seems that, unless this is just a prototype build, that Ubisoft Montreal are changing up the parkour mechanics, which is long overdue as the Press X to Parkour mechanics of all the other games has started to become a little dull. A say a little dull, it’s hardly even an interesting game mechanic anymore, it’s just what you do.
Roaming the French cobbles, and the London cobbles if rumours are to be believed, is the new assassin Arno, who is probably French. His assassin robes are really well designed, giving off a Georgian feel, which makes sense for a Georgian era game. I still hope, however, that there are plenty of unlockable robes like in Black Flag, and I definitely hope the previous assassin’s robes show up as loyalty bonuses like in Black Flag. Even though it will be more difficult to pull of in a city environment, I would like to see hunting return, as it is good way of acquiring upgrades. Preferably the hunting system used in Black Flag, not AC3’s incomprehensible nonsense.
The leaked screenshots looked good, but my god did the trailer look good. I actually believe that this is what the game will look like, as it isn’t in any way held back by last-gen technology. The screenshots were definitely from an old build, and you can tell that by looking at the lower quality textures, but the trailer, although in-engine, did look like it could easily be what gameplay looks like. However, this trailer wasn’t released by a company known for living up to reveal trailers, it was released by Ubisoft, so we’ll see. However, at this stage of falling back in love with the series again thanks to Black Flag, I am definitely looking out for the game. Ubisoft at E3, here we come.
Grand Theft Auto V is a game that I’ve had an oscillating opinion on, ever since it was initially revealed. I say since it’s initial reveal, I don’t even remember that trailer coming out a little over two years ago, but there you go. For a while, I was indifferent to it. I didn’t really care about when the next trailer was inevitably going to hit, and I certainly didn’t bother becoming part of the hype machine.
It wasn’t until a whole year later that a follow-up trailer was released, an actual trailer rather than a monologue from Michael that gave vague back story details. Again, I didn’t particularly care, and with the apparent release data of Spring 2013 mentioned at the end of the trailer, the hype machine was in full force. However, there had been no proper gameplay footage or demos a whole one year after the game’s initial reveal. Then came the January 31st delay of the game. There was no gameplay footage at all, and people were still upset that the game was delayed.
It wasn’t until about six months after the delay that actual gameplay footage hit, which was still preceded by three character trailer. Even then, it was just a heavily cut trailer and it there was still no clear indication of what the game was like. The scenes they showed were good, of course, but after playing the game, a lot of the trailer was exaggerated. It gives the impression that the heists would have heavy input from the player, but in the end it was simply limited to two options and a selection of associates. It also demonstrates features that are flat-out not part of the game, such as buying new houses. Sure, you can buy businesses and garages, but there are only six houses in the game, two of which you can’t access after certain points in the game. Buying houses did become a much bigger part of the game when GTA Online was eventually rolled out about two weeks after the game was released, buy I am fairly certain I never actually bought a house because the multiplayer was so damn abhorrent.
When the game finally released, after a couple more trailers and a horribly misinforming GTA Online gameplay trailer, it was impossible to not hear about the game. A small part of my justification for buying the game a couple of days after its release was that I would actually be able to talk about something. The game was a clear improvement over GTA IV, there is no doubt about it, but for all it’s talk about being a huge and detailed city, there some clear missed ideas. There are basketball courts and football posts scattered around the game world, so why can’t we use them? For whatever reason Franklin can’t play tennis, so why not add basketball as an ‘exclusive’ sport he can play. Sports also help increase your incredibly pointless skills, which seem to have been added just to add some false depth to the game. The fat/muscle mechanics from San Andreas affected the gameplay more than the skill trees did.
However, when you consider everything, the singleplayer game was still good, some might say great. It wasn’t until the release of GTA Online when I realised why it didn’t come out on the same day as the game, its complete garbage. I tried playing online when it came out, and I think I watched that unskippable and eventually grating cutscene about nine times before I actually managed to start playing, not to mention how many times I had to use what is quite possibly the worst character customisation system ever developed. After meeting some characters who were understandably cut from the main game, I tried to interact with a fellow player, who promptly shot me in the face. It also doesn’t help that the online is incredibly grindy, with the prices of everything being raised, and microtransactions were added which people would buy because everything was so damn expensive. I pretty much stopped playing the game after my experience online, and it’s not exactly comforting that the online heists which were shown quite prevalently in the August 2013 online trailer are still not in the game.
The above video isn’t particularly relevant, just being a GTA V version of a movie I’m interested in. I just needed to break up the monotony of several blocks of text. After a fairly long time of not playing the game and instead playing PS4 Lego games, I went back to the game this month. Not the online, hell no. Just the singleplayer. It seemed without all of the people screaming their praises I enjoyed the game a lot more. Maybe it was due to me being able to form my own opinion rather than being told by an army of Internet soldiers what to think. That mission collecting the submarine is still awful though. Don’t put me in a slow as hell submarine with no minimap directions and a murky environment and expect me to have fun.
Sometimes a trailer is released for a game that just makes you feel bad. Think back to Dead Island, one of the most incredible trailers I have ever seen from a game. Yeah, while the game was a glitchy, hilarious mess, that trailer will always remain in my mind. Recently, 11 Bit Studios, who you may know from the Anomaly series, released a trailer for This War of Mine.
At a first glance, it looks like another game that will be about guns and the shooting of, but when the trailer reaches the stinger, it immediately hits you with a brutal image and one of the best taglines for a game I have seen in a while: “In War, Not Everyone is a Soldier”. This is where we realise that this is not an over-the-top military shooter, but a dark survival game. This War of Mine is a 2D game, something I am absolutely okay with, seeing as one of my favourite survival games, The Last Stand: Union City, works absolutely fine in 2D.
According to impressions from various, more professional writers, you will begin in one of several possible shelters, each with randomized items and completely randomized inhabitants. This is great, as this will be vital in making sure the game is replayable. The crafting system also seems to be grounded in reality, rather than Minecraft’s slightly ridiculous “get some rocks, some red dust and a bow and arrow and make a dispenser”. You find some wood and nails, you create a bed frame. It makes perfect sense. It was also mentioned that rainwater collection is a vital task, which sounds pretty damn interesting.
At night, you will be able to scavenge, and it will come with huge risk and moral degradation. One example mentioned was going to a distant building for supplies, and finding an armed man inside, whereas you are only helped by your fists. After the person leaves, you can enter and try to get food and supplies, but the man comes back, but rather than shooting you, he runs off. It’s here when you realise that you are not playing as a good person, at all. What if that person was feeding a family, or was caring for somebody sick? This sort of unscripted moral choice was previously demonstrated brilliantly in Papers, Please, where you can make your own decisions, and not one set by the developer.
Story details for the game are currently unknown, but according to 11 Bit’s CEO Grzegorz Miechowski, the game was inspired by a civilian’s survival in a Bosnian warzone, so a viable guess could be made that the game takes place in Bosnia & Herzegovina during the Bosnian War. Seeing as very few games have highlighted the Bosnian War, Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 being the only one in recent memory, the setting and events should be fresh and much more interesting than war in the East, which is becoming way too common. This War of Mine is a game that came from nowhere and almost immediately became a game I wanted to see more of. Alongside the already confirmed release platforms of PC, Mac, Linux and Mobile, I don’t think it’s too far out of the question that the game will be released on eighth generation consoles, especially considering Anomaly 2 is already being ported to PS4. An ongoing war as a survival game framework is something that, to my immediate knowledge, has never been done before. I’m very interested in seeing some gameplay, and I really want this game to be good.
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