Release date: April 28, 2015 Genre: First-Person Shooter Publisher:M2H, Blackmill Games Developer: M2H, Blackmill Games Engine:Unity Platforms: Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One Modes: Multiplayer Only
Verdun,
one of the bloodiest battles of The Great War and an appropriate name for the
most realistic WW1 shooter out today. It was my housemate Brok that first
introduced me to it, the game was curiously released in the shadow of Battlefield 1 yes even a
year before it came out there was a lot of talk about the new Battlefield game
would be going to the World War 1 front. When I first saw game known as Verdun I realized
that this was actually a much more realistic first person shooter then
Battlefield will ever be and decided to give it a go.
The treacherous Front lines
Verdun is set in the midst of the First World War and as the
title says specifically the western front from 1914 to 1918, it features many
of the famous battlegrounds of the time including Battle of Champagne, TheMeuse-Argonne Offensive and Fort
Douaumont itself. The game has a heavy squad focus rewarding you for
teamwork and especially rewarding players who play in the same squad regularly,
it features Realistic World War 1 gameplay: Authentic weaponry with realistic
bullet physics, skill based weapon handling, gore, poisonous gas with a
claustrophobic gas mask experience, realistic gore and artillery barrages. The
“Frontlines” game mode is true trench warfare that forces you to attack or defend in tandem with the enemy.
Each side fights over a turn-based frontline map that consists of multiple
sectors that can be captured by either side. Staying true to the
typical attrition warfare of that time, both sides attack and
counter-attack each other in turn, so you will be forced to defend each
captured sector of trenches. The goal is to capture the enemy‘s HQ sector in
order to win the game.
The trenches of Argonne, I think I had HDR on at that point.
Verdun it looks the part too right when you load the game
you’re in a trench with some classic WW1-era music playing on the stereo and
the whole setting feels very true to the era. Though the menu is a bit
confusing in the way you choose your gamemode first i.e. the most prominent
mode: Frontlines. You need to join a squad first and then it loads you into
whatever map that squad is in, and then you also have the option of “Playing
Now” which is bloody annoying cause I keep accidentally pressing it twice and
it jumps into the first available squad which wouldn’t be a problem apart from
the times it dumps you into servers with no players. There are various other
modes including: Attrition which is basically team deathmatch with a ticket
bleed and Rifle Deathmatch which is pretty self explanatory. The only offline
mode is “Squad defense” which pits you against waves of NPC opponents that are
pretty damn stupid, they often run right past you then all crowd at the
objective and whoever was lucky enough to go the machinegunner class gets to
mow them all down, it was all quite ludicrous but anyway we didn’t play that
mode much.
The Game mode screen with the map of the western front
In Verdun the main game is Frontlines, and you join a squad
in either the Western Powers or the Entente, you have a role within the squads
themselves which are in the nation’s language so are often hard to decipher.
The squad roles are called various different things depending on which military
you are fighting for but usually encompass a Sharpshooter who has access to
Sniper Rifles, a Bombardier who has access to grenades, traps and other
explosive devices, a Machinegunner and an Officer. The officer is different as
he usually only carries a pistol but has various abilities including being able
to issue attack and defend commands and the ability to be a forward spawn point
for the team. Officers also have special abilities such as the ability launch
artillery strikes, mustard gas and recon planes to reveal enemy locations.
Playing Frontlines restricts the areas that you can move around as when you are
defending you are forbidden from running forward of the trench area and when
you are attacking and there are obviously edges of the map you cannot go like
every other game. In all of the maps there are capture points and capturing
these within a certain time allows you to move forward and eventually capture
the enemies main base and in turn the enemy can “gain a foothold” and capture
the area back if they have enough soldiers in the area similar tothe tug of war trench warfare of WW1 with a
shifting frontline.
A basic display of how the Frontlines mode works, one side attacks, the other defends and the rest is hotsory :D
Verdun seems to focus a lot on Squads which are based on
historical units such as the British Tommies and the German Stoßtrupp, the squad
levelling system is quite confusing as you can only level up the type of squad
you are in. So for example the Canadians are an Assault type squad therefore have more
assault type weapons and the officers can launch gas attacks at the enemy
whereas the French Chasseur Alpins are a Recon type squad with sniper rifles
and espionage abilities and officers have the recon plane ability. Additionally
to this the squads have Abilities and Progression trees which are sort of like
a tech tree in a game like Age of Empires, as you level up you gain additional
abilities such as better sprint time, reload times, spawn times, weapon
efficiency etc and also the officer abilities are upgraded from more lethal
types of gas to bigger artillery rounds. Playing the same type of squad
regularly with the same people is the best way to level your squad abilities
but sadly if you play on your own this is almost impossible as there are 7
types of squads and you’re always playing with different people.
The Squad Ability Tree
Confused yet? So now we get to your personal progression
system. In the past you obtained new weapons and equipment by levelling up your
specified squad role in order to obtain more equipment i.e. rifleman role would
unlock the scoped rifles. But now as per this
post by the developers , everything is done through the ‘Career system’ In
this mode you have a personal career level with 77 as the max level and you
obtain 2 career points per level so as per the diagram below you can use your
career points to open up the different types of loadouts for your squad role.
These new unlocks are not inherently better (i.e. tier 3 may not be better then
tier 2) they just give more options of equipment for your role.
Picking your squad Specialisation
Once you have all this stuff worked out it’s time to
actually play the game! It’s pretty self-intuitive, it’s your regular WASD keys
to move and you can also crouch, prone and sprint, and the shift key also
allows you to hold your breath when aiming which is quite useful when trying to
shoot enemies from afar and I keep forgetting to do it. There is also keys for
grenades and your gas mask, and yes you can jump. When playing the game it’s
very important to play the objective and help your squad by performing your
squad role correctly, the abilities of your class may give you the chance to
earn additional points. For example the machinegunner will get more points for assists
and the sniper more points for longshots and of course running ahead in a
gung-ho approach really does not work. When attacking yes you have to move
forward but your best tactic is to conserve your sprint power and run between
cover and shell holes and inch your way to the front, this is especially true
with the Officer class as you can act as a forward spawn point right near the
capture point.
Playing as an Officer and Machinegunner on Artois with my friends Brok (Ya Gramps) and Tyler (The Barron) towards the end we encounter mustard gas unfortuantely.
The fighting in this game true to real life is brutal,
almost every rifle and machinegun in the game can kill a player with one shot
to the chest or head, so everyone is running around with the itchiest trigger
fingers ever. A split second could be the difference between you seeing and
shooting your opponent to them doing the same and damn is it alternately gratifiying
and infuriating if you make the shot or fall face first into the mud and fall
you will, successfully getting a bullet into someone while they run through the
dirt and watching their body slump onto the ground is one of the most
satisfying sights ever in contrast to the Battlefield series where you have to
riddle them with bullets or get a headshot before they go down. What makes
things worse is that all of the colours blend into each other with the gritty
realistic scheme and environment and the character models look very similar so
often you don’t know it’s an enemy until it’s too late especially when you are
changing factions with different uniforms all of the time so thank god for
friendly fire being off as more than once I’ve fired at a random shadow in the
darkness then realizing it was a teammate. Some of the best moments I’ve had
are as the machinegunner and racking up lots of kills with the rapid fire.
I try out sharpshooting on the Picardie map, I swear I had a scope on but the movie oddly doesn't show it.
The environment and setting of Verdun are all top-notch, all
the locations have that gritty WW1 feel and the attention to detail is
incredible. I actually only realized after a while that I had the gore turned
off by default, and when I turned it on boy was there a change, there were body
parts being blown off and soldiers screaming and writhing on the ground and oh
that was more like it. The various historical maps looked great too, from the
barren trench laden Argonne to the heavily wooden Aisne. Some of my favourites included Vosges which was set in a sparse rocky pinewood forest and Champagne which was the only night map and prime example of
heavily entrenched forces, with that map you had two choices, run through the
deep trenches as they wind around or risk running along the top where there is
a high chance of being shot or getting tangled in the barbed wire and boy is
there a lot of it. Flanders is probably
one of the hardest maps to move forward as it’s caked in mud and water and
there is barely any cover. Moving through these environments feels great and
you really feel like you are part of something compared with other FPS games
where you are in a team but it’s still every man for himself.
Playing the night map 'Champagne' with my friend Brok, there were only a few players in this game.
The graphics in Verdun are very crisp and realistic looking,
there is so much detail in the player models and the maps, the trees the
branches the leaves the rough terrain, everything is modelled true to the era,
I can run the game at ultra setting with no problem so it’s very optimized as
well, even when it’s raining. I play everything on Ultra but leave off the
fancy features such as “High dynamic range” “Depth of Field” “Ambient
Occlusion” and all that stuff that’s supposed to make the game look better but
just downs your FPS, High Dynamic range actually look pretty cool but it makes
the sky to bright and the dark bits too dark, I still leave anti-aliasing on
though I know have a 1440p monitor now. The sounds are good, rifle shots sound
great and so do the explosions and the whistles from the officers, there isn’t
really any music apart from the excellent authentic tunes coming from the radio
In the menu screen and the squad intro music when you join a squad depending on
which type of army you are in .
I try out Sniping in the Wooded Vosges map
If you were to ask me which game I enjoy better between
Verdun and Battlefield 1 it’d be a hard choice, Battlefield 1 has many more features
and classes and of course vehicles but that’s not what this game is about, It
would be nice to be able to be a medic in the game though. Of course BF1 is a
bit arcade or generic FPS and has arguably been the same game since Battlefield
3 just with a different skin. Verdun you can tell has been made specifically to
be as accurate as possible to the trench warfare of WW1, the kills are so much
more satisfying then BF1 and you congratulate yourself on each one. Playing
Verdun with friends is great especially if you play regularly, there is enough
content in there including maps, weapons and classes to keep you busy for a
while. Verdun is the best modern WW1 game out there that I know of and fills a
void that is missing from Battlefield 1 which glosses over trench warfare in its
entirety and If you’re a fan of first person shooters at all then you should
give it a go at least once. When I’m sick of all the constant explosions and
planes and tanks rumbling all over the place I know where to go to
You may have noticed I’m playing Doom a lot lately, and
there has been a lot of talk about Doom as well, this is generally because of
the latest DOOM game, yes DOOM
(2016) another “reboot sequel” as I like to call it. You may have noticed I
complain about this a bit specifically in my reviews of Alien
vs Predator (2010) and Need
for Speed (2015). But anyway I decided that before I played the latest Doom
I had to go through and play all of the Doom series again which
I sort of already have played most of it using the Skulltag Mod as per my post
late last year. I had already played through Doom II: Hell on
Earth many times, I played through The
Ultimate Doom once with the Skulltag mod and have played through Final Doom’s
TNT:
Evilution and The Plutonia Experiment once each. While I
was doing research for the post on the Skulltag mod and the Plutonia experiment
I came across a video featuring the Brutal Doom mod and then
after watching the video
for the Hell
on Earth Starter Pack I hit peak rage and knew I had to try it and wow, was
it good, oh so good.
One of my favorite screenshots from the WAD, the lighting the graphics, the sky, the trees and the buildings all look amazing.
To explain a bit more the Brutal Doom mod was designed
by the somewhat
infamous Marcos Abenante aka Sergeant Mark IV and was
originally designed to simply add more gore the mod, but now has had much more
things added and changed such as the sounds, graphics,
and combat including smoother animations and increased difficulty. I had
actually heard of the mod a while ago but just dismissed it as a “gore mod” as
it might just have been back then but now it’s so much more, it makes Doom look
better than ever and brings it into the 21st Century and I reckon it
does this better then all of the other mods I’ve seen. Brutal Doom
features many new graphical effects, such as new death animations, fake flares
and 3D blood effects for OpenGL, and also changes the gameplay by revamping the
weapons and monster AI. It has been in active development since 2010 with the
Sergeant going on to create Brutal
Doom 64 a “brutalized” version of the N64 game and the mod itself has its
own addons including the popular Project
Brutality which further modernizes and enhances on the Brutal Doom Mod.
Lots of blood and guts, and this was only on the "realistic" setting
Although I did want to try out Brutal Doom on the original
series I thought I may as well try it with the MegaWAD created specifically to be
played with it, the Hell
on Earth Starter Pack. To explain a bit of Doom Lingo a WAD file is a data file for Doom, MegaWAD are the most commonly
referred to as they are a WAD that contains 15 or more levels, The entire Doom
and Doom 2 were each a single MegaWAD so when the community refers to WADS it
is usually a custom set of levels created by an individual. As I mentioned
before the “Hell of Earth Starter Pack” is the MegaWAD created specifically to
be used with Brutal Doom i.e. in order to progress through the levels you need
to crouch, duck and jump all of which you could not do in the original Doom.
One new feature in Brutal Doom is the ability to kick with the Q key, while
this is a relatively useful way to knock enemies backwards it doesn’t know them
back far but the ability is also used to activate some switches, in fact to get
out of the room right at the start of the game you need to give the wall switch
a whack with your boot , took me a while to work that out hah.
The first level of the WAD, a good overview of whats the mod looks like the new features.
One thing I did find weird was that why Sergeant Mark IV had
chosen to call it the “Starter Pack” I’m guessing that was because this is what
you use when playing Brutal Doom or the first thing you should try I guess but
a more appropriate name for it would have been “Brutalized Doom 1 and 2” as it
actually re-creates the story of Doom 1 and 2 from the Invasion of Phobos and
Deimos, to the return to Earth then the entry into Hell then back to earth
again.. all contained in a huge 32 level MegaWAD. While playing through the
game the graphics were great of course as per the mod, but what impressed me
was the amount of detail put into the levels, the first few levels were in a
space station for example but even so the computers looks like actually
computers, the bathrooms looked like bathrooms the toilets looked like toilets
you can even see yourself in mirrors. It wasn’t until I got to the part when
you returned to earth that it really blew me away.
Oh look it's a kitchen
You see in the original Doom
II you were technically supposed to be on earth as there were levels such as Downtown, Suburbs and Industrial
zone that were supposed to resemble cities and towns but are basically just
the normal Doom sci-fi, space base and generic themed textures arranged in
shape of buildings/houses etc with nothing resembling a normal house inside. But
in this mod when you first get to earth, there is grass, there’s trees, there’s
rocks, there’s a normal looking cityscape and modern steel power lines. And
when you get to the neighborhood it looks like an actual neighborhood with
roads and footpaths and grass and trees and lampposts and the houses have full
bedrooms with desks and computers andeven games consoles of all things and the city part is even more insane
with full on office and tenement building and shopping malls and restaurants
with fully stocked kitchens. It’s what Doom 2’s levels should have been like
all along, and wow don’t get me started on the hellish levels which are now scarier
than ever, the horrific "Sacrificial Grounds" level will remain etched in my mind forever not to mention the game's final boss.
The 'Twisted Neighbourhood" level, fighting through with other marines
I’ve mentioned before on my previous post with the Skulltag
mod that Doom looks much better with the advanced graphics but Brutal Doom is
something else, it looks amazing when you look at the before and after shots of
the original Doom and Doom 2 then with the mod installed. Everything is as high
res as the engine can go and the mod supports a full range of resolutions and
graphical tweaking. You also have the option of playing with the monsters set
to their original settings though I admit when you have full mouse and keyboard
control it’s a bit too easy. As I mentioned before there is a wealth of new features
added in the mod all of which you can read about on the Doom Wiki some of my
favourites include the fatalities which you can perform on monsters and
monsters can perform on you and I also like the fact that Invisibility spheres have been replaced with
captured marines that can assist you and are quite capable themselves.
One of the most epic moments from the game, the 'Push into Hell' level where you and the army invade Hell itself.
The
weapon revamps are another good thing while not a weapon I love the new melee
punching and kicking abilities, while the kick is not that effective the
punching really feels good especially once you have the Berserk
powerup where you can alternate between ‘Rip and Tear’ mode where you can
perform fatalities on fallen enemies or ‘Smash’ mode where you simply smash
them to pieces, I sometimes went through whole levels just smashing with my
fists hah. The pistol has been replaced by an awesome very accurate assault
rifle which comfortably matches the player sprite and is useful even late in
the game and you can now pick up grenades from zombie soldiers which are very
powerful doing even more splash damage then the rocket launcher. All of the
other weapons have been revamped to look and sound hardcore, I almost winced
every time I used the shotguns they were so loud, you can also now dual wield
the assault rifle and plasma gun
for even more damage. You can now also use the weapons from fallen enemies such
as the Revenants
missile backpack and the Mancubus flame cannon which was pretty cool. The new and
revamped old guns were great, very powerful and sounded awesome along with the
new death animations.
Smash Rip and Tear! you'll notice I do a fatality on the Cacodemon.
Heating it up with the Mancubus' flame cannon
As mentioned before the monsters and
demons move much faster and have new attacks making them more difficult to
kill, I admit I was having trouble staying alive through the first part of the
game, and when you get to the end of the first chapter and have your first boss
fight I was getting slaughtered and eventually had to rely on god mode, which
wasn’t too bad actually, playing the original series with god mode got boring
but got better without it, but playing brutal doom without being invincible is
goddamn tough so I wasn’t too ashamed to do it, plus I was going to see the
entirety of this WAD if it was the last thing I did. I was amazed at the amount
of effort that had gone into it, there were things that you would never dream
of seeing in the original Doom, I’m no stranger to mods for games putting in
new features but this was something else, from all new sprites of tanks and
centaur-like demons to skyscrapers and hellish castles the starter pack had it
all. In this episode it was probably the first time ever in Doom that you felt
like you were not alone, there were lots of other marines, tanks, aircraft and
even civilians at one point. The WAD I noticed had quite a bit of content and
assets borrowed from other games including the civilian and tank sprites and
some custom sounds one of which I recognized from Half-Life. It didn’t take me
long to recognize the Quake
2 soundtrack as well which made some rather bangin music.
This is the 'Push into Hell' level again but I couldn't help including it as it looks awesome
I look forward to taking this mod
further in conjunction with other mods including Project Brutality which
adds even more new weapons and also maybe the HXRTC HUD as
well as per Martinoz’
videos as there seems to be no end to mods for the original Doom, maybe it’s
just because it’s so popular and easy to mod. I’ll never forget how I felt when
playing the mod for the first time and seeing the changes and seeing the
reimagined story of Doom and Doom 2 it just blew me away so hats off to Sergeant Mark IV for a
great mod and campaign. I have decided to try and complete the Doom series
finally having recently played Brutal Doom 64 which was
also very good. Doom 64 is now actually considered to be the proper sequel to
Final Doom though I will still play Doom 3 BFG edition for completeness before
I play Doom 2016. In any case, if you have never played the original Doom and
want something as modern as possible, this is the way to go.
Release date: November 5, 2015 (PS4 & Xbox One)
March 17, 2016 (PC) Genre: Racing/Arcade, Open World Publisher:Electronic Arts Developer: Ghost Games, Criterion Games Platforms: PC, Playstation 4, Xbox One Players: 1 and Online
It’s been a
while since I’ve played a new Need for Speed game, with Carbon
being the last I have certainly skipped a few and just kept playing Carbon at
least three times. No less than eight Need for
Speed titles have passed before I decided to get back on the horse and try one
out again. As I detailed in my previous review of NFS
Carbon my new super and classic car simulator was Test Drive Unlimited
and now Test
Drive Unlimited 2, well it was, I have previously finished it 3 times
already and in my latest playthrough I managed to accidentally delete my save
which was disappointing but I guess that’s that, I ain’t doing it all over
again especially with Forza
Horizon 3 on the er horizon, well actually I can’t even make that joke
cause it’s out now. I was sad that I stuffed up my last dwell into Test Drive
Unlimited but I am getting excited about Forza though it will be the first
Forza Motorsport game I have played so I have no idea what to expect.
Racing my Lambo, looks good but It wasn't me best driving, just trying to stay in control of the damn thing.
But anyway
this review isn’t about NFS Carbon or Test Drive Unlimited or Forza Horizon it’s about Need for Speed
that’s right “Need for Speed” as I lamented once before they are going down the
“Alien vs Predator” naming convention though this is actually supposed to be a
“reboot” of the series, not a sequel. The meaning to that was partly that the
previous Need for Speed Underground games Need for Speed: Most Wantedand Need for Speed: Carbon were both part
of a loosely connected plot where you ‘the player’
were involved, the series actually culminated with NFS Carbon so basically
you’re now a new “player” in the game and possibly the next games will continue
the story. So in this review I will be referring to the game as “Need for Speed
2015” as that’s the easiest way to remember it. I knew before I bought that
game that the reviews weren’t exactly that good, people were canning the
“always online” feature which in case you didn’t know the game cannot be played
offline and it also cannot be played with just you, there are always other
players zooming around and probably crashing into you. Other issues included having
only dusk to dawn racing, rubber-banding AI, lacking an in-car view,
performance issues due to the always-online requirement on all platforms, the
inability to pause the game, having no manual transmission, and lacking drag
races (the latter two being added in an update). Another thing that was panned
was the too-short story which featured cringeworthy live-action FMV scenes and
constant annoying GTA4-esque phone calls.
My first or probably second drag race, I still didn't have much of an idea how to do it, sort of like the duels in Red Dead Redemption.
The game merits were in the graphics, as when I first saw
the game I remember thinking “wow” that is pretty damn good but that was
basically all that I was impressed about, the funny thing was I actually wanted
to see all of the FMV videos as they looked pretty damn funny based on the
trailer. So I decided to get the game and doing so I decided to finally try out
getting it via a “CD” keys site as I had heard this was much cheaper than buying
online, especially from Origin. I used the site www.cdkeys.com
and must say I was impressed by the service. I purchased the code and it was
sent to me quickly I was able to enter it with little to no fuss, there are
other sites but I have only ever used that one and it has been fine for my purposes. I
had to complete one last round of Need for Speed: Carbon before playing this
and as I had back in 2015 it was right to go, though do expect a few
comparisons between the two in this review as always with sequels hah.
So, the story, well basically you start off the same way you always
have (almost) in the fictional city of Ventura Bay, a rainy seaside
city that you unfortunately don’t get to see in the daylight. It’s a
controllable intro as in previous games and you are pushed right into the
action racing with some random until you come to a stop under a highway and
meet Spike
(via an FMV cutscene) the first of the major characters who is impressed by
your driving and tells you to go meet Travis at his garage which is a short trip away, I immediately
had problems with the controls as is seems my Logitech PS3 style gamepad didn’t
officially register as an actual controller it registered as a steering wheel
for some weird reason so I tried to use that but it just didn’t work right as
different buttons were used for accelerationand hanging up the phone etc and then two buttons were meshed into one
and it was goddamn annoying. I saw that the control display screens were an
xbox controller so I just thought screw it and went out and purchased a cheap
$20.00 wired xbox 360 controller for the PC and yes I said xbox 360 not xbox
one they were too expensive and were similar anyway and once I plugged that in
it worked much better.
Revving it up in the intro, the ui is quite minimal at this point.
Once you drive to the garage the next FMV cutscene starts
and here is where you meet the rest of the crew and get a sneak peek at the
fairly high profile world car-scene celebrity driving icons that the game
features including Magnus Walker: a Porsche collector and modifier, Ken Block: a
professional hoon, Akira Nakai: the founder of Rauh Welt Begriff a
Japanese tuning shop, Shinichi Morohoshi: a Lamborghini
tuner with ties to the Yakuza and the Risky Devil
street drifting team. So basically you meet the rest of the crew including Travis, Robyn, Amy and Manu with each one
idolizing one of the icons. You do all of this walking around as basically a
camera as it is all done through your eyes in first person occasionally seeing
your hand and arms as you fist bump or cheers others. Now I know that the game
does this to immerse you as if you were playing as yourself which works with
other games such as Skyrim for example where everyone is relatively formal and
in awe of you it doesn’t really matter that they don’t refer to you by name
they just refer to you as the ‘Dragonborn’ or whatnot which works as you’re in
a medieval fantasy world and everyone acts accordingly and you can see yourself
and respond, without a voice of course but it’s at least something. But here
where it’s set in modern times it’s a kind of depressing experience where
everyone talks to you but you can’t talk to them, you can’t express yourself in
any way apart from your hands, I spent half the time wishing I could get with
one of the girls or a random girl or at least have a girlfriend though that’s
going into VR porn territory I suppose.
Thankfully someone has put together all of the cutscenes in the game for your viewing pleasure, I got many a laugh from these with all the bad acting and product placement. Thanks to Cakechievables for the video since once you finish the story mode you can't start again unless you want to delete all of your previous progress.
So basically you then undertake a
series of Missions
with each mission set part of a Driving
icon’s style of choice including speed, style, guild, crew and outlaw so
for example Manu is
interested in the ‘style’ type of racing and idolizes Ken Block so all of the
missions he gives you are in the gymkhana (or
motokhana) style of racing with the series culminating with meeting Ken Block
himself and beating him in a race. This goes on with intervals of FMV scenes of
you meeting various crew members at different places for short amounts of time
before you go off and drive again. There isn’t really any goal in the game
except to just get to the end of all the styles and meet every driving icon
which makes the game kind of short as people were complaining about, most of
the time I was debating about when I would buy a new car and how I would upgrade it
but I’ll go into that later.
The "My NFS" section in the main menu featuring my career progress.
Oh yeh I'm a speed demon, in order the icons are Speed, Style, Outlaw, Build and drift
So after all of the intro you find yourself choosing your
first car and I decided on the 1990 Ford Mustang
Foxbody as it looked cool compared to whatever the others were and I got
started on customizing it. I was very interested to see how the visual
customization works as it is one of my favourite parts of the Need for Speed
series. There are a fair few customization
options, the same if not more than Need for Speed Carbon,
almost every part of the car can be customized though it depends on which type
of car you have for example you can modify all the usual things like custom
bumpers, side skirts, hoods, wheels and spoilers, some cars could be modified
with more complicated things like Diffusers, Bumper Canards and
enlarged Fendersall of which I’ll admit I didn’t know what they were until I saw them. It’s a
fairly minimal experience when customizing as the part options come up as dots
and the camera swings around the car as you search through them and edit the
parts you want, as before most parts are locked but you can quickly unlock them
by doing the story mode.
You can see the dots on nearby parts of the car.
I had another controller issue where I could not
access certain options when customizing my car for example I was unable to put
decals on cause I lacked the option to “confirm” also the control options that
came up around the screen were incorrect as what was supposed to happen was the
controls displayed differently if you started using a keyboard or controller
(similar to GTA5) but they did not, almost as if something was triggering the
controller. Then after consulting the EA forums I realized by troubleshooting
that it was my other controllers that were causing the issue so I unplugged
them then I was finally all good to go. I added some random body mods including
a protruding engine from the bonnet and a spoiler, with the painting and decals
I dressed my first car up pretty ridiculously, I loved the look of the chrome
style paint as it looked amazing with the graphics all shiny etc so I added
that in a lime green colour and added some random stripe decals then I decided
to do it up like some sort of Bogan Aussie car. So I added an Australian flag
decal on the back window, added my initials on the side and sold bronze/gold
chrome wheels. The end result looked pretty ridiculous but I was happy with it
as it was only the first car, I didn’t bother with any more decals including
brand names as this was just my first car.
Bogan Aussie car lookin good heh
The next part was where it got a bit complicated with the Performance
Parts as there are 21 different kinds of parts most of which I didn’t know
what the hell they are or what they do including things like a Differential
and Intake
Manifold though they have some very informative text there explaining this,
not that it makes any difference it’s just interesting to know. There are also
7 stages of each part Sport, Sport+, Performance, Performance+, Race, Race+ and
Elite, though not all parts have all of these stages for example the Engine
Block has all of them, the Exhaust
Manifold only has the 4 main ones and the Handbrake
only has two. In previous NFS games I had about 3-4 cars per playthrough and I
made sure that each one had a certain level of upgades to match where I was in
the game, so with all these different upgrades and no “upgrade all” button I
was pretty lost on what to do. I tried out getting all of one type of upgrade
for each car but because there were so many thing to upgrade and not all of
them had all of the different stages of each part. So I think for next time I’m
just going to make it simpler by just upgrading everything to whatever max I
have available, that’s what I did in NFS Carbon anyway. Speaking of changing my
car the other issue was that all cars were unlocked right from the start, your
only limitation was the amount of funds you have. So when choosing a new car I
had to do a bunch of writing and maths to work out which cars I could afford to
buy and also upgrade without breaking the bank, well at least I’m a
money-conscious street racer.
Performance upgrades screen
Most of the unlocks to the performance parts are from your Reputation level though these are not the only thing "Rep" unlocks. You earn
reputation as you perform driving maneuvers,
stunts, feats, and destruction, the feats in themselves are all part of
the 4 styles with driving in the oncoming lane giving you rep with
Morohoshi and the outlaws for example. The more rep you gain the more performance parts and also race events you unlock. Interestingly you also have a cameo appearance from Eddie who you may remember from Need for Speed: Underground he is back with his Eastsiders gang in Ventura bay as part of the Legends Update which features Eddie challenge series, a series of events leading up to racing Eddie himself again .
I did well for rep on that race.
And then you got to the Tuning menu where
you could tweak various things about your car, though to be honest most of them
are about putting the car in ‘Drift’ or ‘Race’ mode for example adjusting
everything so that the car is more twitchy and slides around throwing the back
out easily or making it hug the ground allowing you to carve smooth straight
lines when racing, and of course if you wanted to go either way it created an
issue. One thing about this game is that there are a fair few drifting events
in it as both the ‘Style’ and “Crew’ storylines were pretty much all about
drifting and showing off for pointsbut
the ‘Speed’ storyline was all about racing mostly long straight tracks as fast
as possible in a time trial or race. The problem here is that say I want to do
a bunch of races all in a row, each of which have different types of racing am
I going to go back to the garage and change around my car for each one? Hell
no, even if you decide to do a bunch of speed races then a bunch of style races the ‘Build’ and ‘Outlaw’ races are a mixed bag so it’s really not
gonna work. I ended up having to make my car as balanced as possible leaving
almost everything toward the middle of the dial, even having to leave on the
stock tyres after realizing that the upgraded ones were either for grip or
drift. I swear sometimes it’s hard for casual car fans like me.
The tuning menu
The game’s open world acts similarly to previous NFS games
you drive out your garage and are immediately able to drive to most areas in
Ventura bay, the map itself is pretty big, laid out with multiple freeways
across a large bay leading to different parts of the city with some hilly areas
with less interconnected roads similar to the topmost area in Underground 2’s
Bayview city which allows for
lots of drifting action and of course is where most of the drifting takes
place. There are many collectibles
sprewn about the city including spots where you are encouraged to perform a
donut and it’s pretty cool when you perform ones and it shifts to another
camera angle so you don’t get dizzy, there is also free car parts which you can
find and add to your collection to modify your cars. There are photo
opportunities where you can take pictures of your car next to street art or
picturesque locations which are kind of ruined by the rain and darkness but
anyway.
Wooo donuts and photo ops, I need practice donuting :(
Playing through the game wasn’t too hard the controls were pretty much
the same as before, I had trouble doing a perfect start on the Drag races as I
wasn’t quite sure what I was doing and at the start it didn’t really explain
properly so I really gotta read up on that before my next playthrough. I had a
bit of trouble balancing the car between race and drift, drifting although
similar to other Need for Speed games still took a bit of practice to
masterI finished every storyline off
eventually meeting all of the driving icons after a bunch of awkward calls and
FMV sequences and it was pretty cool, actually I didn’t see all of them as I
didn’t do the outlaw missions mainly because I hate dicking around with the
police it’s just dangerous and tiring and can hurt your wallet and is just not
worth it, just like doing it in real life hah.
It's Nakai-san! Will you just give him a blowjob already Amy? Damn the way these people crap on about their icons I swear I wish this game had more profanity and smut.
Modifying my cars got better as I went on I chose for my
next car a Honda
NSX Type-R and decked it out with a cool looking bodykit and painted it a
dark purples chrome paint with sort of beetroot coloured decals. I also decided
on the format of where my manufacturer name text decals would go, as per my
Underground 2 designs there would be one on each sides of the doors or side skirts
(or both) one each on the er spot above the back wheels, one on the back window
and also one on the front window this time as I thought it looked pretty cool
if you got it right. My next two cars were an Porsche 911 GTS RS
and the Lamborghini
Murcielago LP 640-V SV which I was very much looking forward too. I was
very happy with the designs for both of them as I think I got it just right with
the minimal contrasting colours with the Porsche and the blending ice-theme of
the Lambo, I also chose not to have bodykits on both of them as they both
already looked great. Lastly I created this ridiculous looking golden painted Volvo 242 DL which was pimped out to the max, in fact I constantly got reputation for having the "Most tuned car" in a race.
I like this shot of my pimped out Volvo hah
Probably the most celebrated and praised thing about this
version of Need for Speed was the visuals, the game looked absolutely fantastic
even though I did ridicule the way that it always seemed to be either raining
or damp in Ventura bay specifically so the game could show of its water shine
and reflection details but yes it did look pretty damn amazing. The game was
most definitely the best looking NFS game I had seen and the best looking cars
I had seen, even without the neon, come to think of it neon hasn’t been in
since Need for Speed Underground 2, sound systems as well, apparently there is
supposed to be a sound system available in this game but I never had a car
which you could put one in. Anyway back to the graphics, I must admit as cheesy
as the acting in the FMV sequences were they were done well and looked the part
I liked the fact that your own cars were superimposed into the scene and the
characters were able to walk in front of it etc, which was pretty cool. The game
sounded fine with the engines and the tyres screeching and everything else
though I really enjoyed the music the most with a bangin techno, alternative, RnB
and hiphop soundtrack and even got some tunes for my compilations from it.
This is a short clip but the sunset in the mountains is beautiful
As the game was "always online" I did literally run into a few other players, as the annoying thing is unlike other open world racing games like Test Drive where you can encounter other players around the world but not in races unless you invite them. In Need for Speed when you start a race you're still in the game world and you can see other human players and they can see you and can "invade" your race by crashing into you or your computer +opponents. Sometimes it was hard to determine who was an actual player and who was computer controlled though you can see actual players because of their Origin account picture but there were actually other computer controlled street racers out there. As well as that, looking at the map of the area you can see other players doing an actual race event as you can see their own group computer controlled players racing along with them.
If you look closely here, you can see the player "jir01" doing a race with computer opponents.
I once did a Drift train event around a small dock area with other computer controlled cars while at the same time another player was doing the same thing with his group of racers while going in the opposite direction I would have been annoyed if I wasn't having so much fun. Could you imagine a full server of people doing this? though I guess it's limited to a certain amount of people at one time. I also tried out the "Speedlists" or whatever the hell it was but I didn't get many players to race with so just gave up, I was a bit late to the party with this game unfortunately though there were still a few people around in the game world, one of the best features was that you could invite anyone into the current race you were starting as part of the story mode which was cool to race with others but sometimes counter-productive as they could be laggy or crashy hampering your race but it's all good fun and you have the option to go on your own anyway.
Drift Trial with other racers, I had a bit of trouble keeping up heh
This game was probably the most car culture focused with all
of the car culture celebs and the real-life brands and even EA’s real-life car enthusiast
group Speedhunters and it shows from
the very street-racer centered story. Overall the game was a good play for me
but as always the first run through is most often the worst and the real fun
comes in the second, third or even fourth run through, it’s been given abad rap for being always online and too short
but I reckon it was ok. I’m very interested in playing it again properly after
I have worked everything out, this was especially true with carbon and will be
for this game as well.
Release date: Windows, OS X, Linux: 21 October 2014 Genre: First-Person Shooter (FPS) Publisher:Suprise Attack Developer: Samurai Punk Platforms: PC/Mac/Linux/PS4/Xbone Players: 1 to 8
Hey all just wanted to mention as I'm sure you've noticed I've changed the colour scheme of the blog just to change things around a bit, I've also widened the edges as most screens are pretty big these days so no need to make the main body so small. So anyway I'll see how the black scheme goes but I may chnage it back for the next post, enjoy!
Do you remember all of those times playing games like battle
mode on Mario Kart on
the SNES
or Goldeneye
on the N64 or basically
any game on a console where you could sneak a look at your opponents screen to
work out exactly where they were and what they were doing? It was hard to
resist wasn’t it? Well developer Samurai Punk
have taken this idea and turned it into an actual game, a game where to win,
you must actively, consistently and masterfully Screencheat. Yes screen peak,
sneak or even gaze if you were that shameless, screen cheating has been around
for a long, long time, basically ever since there was split screen games, but
with Screencheat this is allowed and encouraged and also vital.
Bot practice with the blunderbuss in Museum
The game is
basically a fast-paced first-person shooter similar to Goldeneye that I
mentioned before except set in a very colourful world, in fact each map is
divided into different coloured areas, blue, red, green, yellow, purple etc the
reason for this being is that in screencheat everyone is invisible. How are you
supposed to hit anyone you ask? well it’s quite simple, you MUST sneak looks at
someone else’s screen to see where they are in order to know where to aim and
yes even when playing on PC you can still do this as you can see everyone’s (up
to 8 players) screens. This is made easier by the colours of each level, for
example if you are on the top of the blue stairs and you can see someone about
to walk up from the bottom of the blue stairs you would shoot in that direction
to hopefully hit them, there is no health in screencheat so it’s basically one
hit kill, but the weapons are designed around this and I admit it works very
well.
8 players on the Helix map
Controlling is easy as you move around and shoot and jump
with the usual keys but then it gets wacky, for instance the weapons
that you use go from unusual to ridiculous, the basic weapon is the single shot
blunderbuss which is a classic, reliable and faithful weapon then you get into
things like the HobbyHorse which allows you to charge into enemies to kill
them, the Trappeur which leaves behind a laser for the enemy to trip into, the ridiculous
Bear Bomb and my personal favourite, the Sorgean which shoots out a giant
spiked mace which then turns around and flies back the way it came. The design
of Screencheat is quite simple with minimal details and texturing making it
easier to work out where you or more importantly your opponents are, the player
characters are basically just single colour 3D models though they are only seen
when killed.
Duel with the Sorgean is hella fun
The levels are a variety of colourful locations such as museums,
gardens, temples and floating platforms that offer a wide range of stairs,
lifts, jump pads and obstacles, this interesting level design combined with old
school style of the graphics plus the absurdity of the weapons and the
clumsiness of watching other screens makes for a unique experience. What also
makes this game hilariously fun is just the general wackiness, wacky music,
wacky sounds and wacky text, for example when you kill another player or get killed
yourself the game comes up with a variety of death messages like “You submitted
Rustymango to the app store for approval” or “You got baked by Ultimate_Sacrifice”
and also simply “DERP” It also has funny sounds and speech with all the weapon
popping, smooshing, bZzZZZZzzzZZZ’ing and booping when you score a kill, the
announcer also sounds like he’s from the circus “how embarrassing!”.
8 player comp on the Temple level at Respawn Lan
The main gamemode is called “My First Deathmatch” but there
are many others including “Capture the Fun” which is sort of like “Bag Tag” in Timesplitters
except “the fun” is a Pinata which leave a trail of confetti so the person with
the fun is easy to locate. Another is called “Gold Rush” where players must collect
coins and shoot other players to gain their coins. And finally one of the more
interesting ones is “Murder Mystery” similar to the game Cluedo you are assigned to murder a particular person in a
particular room. Depending on when you are playing it may be hard to find populated
servers though there is also the training mode which acts as sort of a single
player mode and a tutorial mode as well to get you used to the game, though it
is relatively easy to pick up and only after a few games the first time I was
happily fragging people.
I try out the "Murder Mystery" mode and suck at it hah, there a requirement for the place or room I had to kill them in, I probably should have done it in a map like Manor but I wanted to see what Steeple was like.
Screencheat is another game that I only really played at LAN
parties on PC similar to Natural
Selection 2 so the review may be a bit shorter than most, when released
originally it had only 4 maps and a handful of weapons and game modes but the
latest update add much more content. Screencheat
can be played online or on LAN though the only qualm I had is that the main
menu is a bit confusing when you are trying to join or start a game as sometimes
I wasn’t sure if I had started it in the right area or not. I haven’t played
much online or seen absolutely every one of the levels but I’ve seen enough to
know that Screencheat is a hugely fun LAN game that is enjoyed by everyone and
everyone should play it at a LAN at least once.
JD
7/10
Things I liked:
Innovative and original weapons
Easy to pick up and play
Great Fun at LANs
Things I didn’t like:
Main menu creating online/offline games a bit confusing.
Not much longevity outside of LAN parties and competitions.
p.s thanks to Scratch
for his great guide
to Screencheat
Release date:November 10, 2015 Genre: Real-Time Strategy(RTS) Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment Developer: Blizzard Entertainment Platforms: PC/Mac Players: 1 to 8 Online Classification: M (ESRB)
When I started this review I immediately decided to bring up
the posts from the previous two games in the Starcraft II trilogy and then
realised that I had done a review for Heart
of the Swarm but not for Wings of
Liberty, which I now regret as it’s a bit too late to write a review for it
before I do this one but anyway I guess there’s not much I can do. As I’ve said
previously the purchase of this trilogy was largely based on the fact that the
previous games had excellent storytelling and I wanted to see more of it. Of
course yes there was the fact that I was playing Starcraft again and the
graphics looked awesome but in reality I’m not too fond of RTS anymore but
playing Starcraft on the easiest setting is absolutely fine, like a
power-fantasy if you will. Yes there’s still the micro-managing and the dread
before every level working out what it’s going to be like and wondering whether
you have enough army or need those few extra soldiers or whether you have
enough soldiers at the main base or whether you left the iron on and all those
things that make RTS stressful.
Oh man that's a lot of shit to micromanage
In any case, this was the big one, the last one, the one
that wraps things up (at least I hoped) yes Legacy
of the Void, the final part of Starcraft II where the enigmatic Protoss are
the main race. I was looking forward to this as the Protoss are my favourite
race and I would usually play as them in Multiplayer though to be honest now I
would most likely choose the Zerg since I now have a Zerg symbol necklace,
especially if I was wearing it at the time. I often just go with whatever race
is under-represented in a match though with only three races this is rarely an
issue. Starcraft II kept the same process as the first game starting with the Terrans
then Zerg
with Protoss
last. Before I started the actually Legacy of the Void expansion though there
was first the Whispers of Oblivionprologue featuring
Zeratul
as he attempts to make sense of the scattered prophecy that spoke of the return of Amon. This is where
you first encounter the Moebius Corps and the Tal'darim
in this expansion and was only three missions long but was a steep learning
curve as instead of easing back into the game with the normal campaigns this
prologue threw you into it allowing you to build and use the whole library of
units from the multiplayer whereas you would usually be very limited, but I got
through it anyway.
Zeratul attacks Amon's Temple
In Legacy of the Void you play as Artanis who
you may remember from the Protoss campaign in StarCraft: Brood War, he has now become the
Protoss Hierarch (aka leader) The story begins with a pretty
impressive trailer showing the Protoss fighting the Zerg on Aiur and the first
mission features you taking control of a very large force of Protoss from
Artanis’ Golden Armada which was quite fun. You meet with
quite a few others during the course of the campaign many of which have their
own faction, most notably Karax the Phase-Smith of the Khalai, Rohana the Grand
Preserver from the Spear
of Adun, Vorazun daughter of Raszagal and
new Matriach of the Nerazim (aka Dark Templar), Alarak of the Tal'darim,
Fenix aka Talandar of
the Purifiers and
of course Jim Raynor. The bulk of the story is about Artanis
uniting the various Protoss factions under the one banner which I now know is
called the Daelaam
and heed Zeratul’s advice to defeat Amon and force him
back into the Void.
The story is quite good with tenuous alliances and pacts being made and of
course I love how the Protoss talk and their politics, especially with the
Terrans as Artanis and Jim’s way of speaking are different but they can still
communicate fine, there was scene where Artanis was talking to Rory Swann and the
exchange was pretty funny. Once you had obtained the ship Spear
of Adun the story became very much like the other two as the ship becomes
your mobile forward operational center where you could explore the various rooms/levels much like Kerrigan’s Leviathan and
Jim Raynor’s Hyperion
battlecruiser.
The gathered Protoss Leaders from left to right: Talandar, Artanis, Rohana, Vorazun, Alarak and Karax
The humourous exchange between Artanis and Rory Swann
The Spear of Adun
has the usual staging areas of the previous games such as a bridge and a places where you can modify and
upgrade your army. Modifying your army this time around involves going to the War Council part of the
ship where your units are divided into classes i.e. melee warrior, ranged
warrior, robotic assault etc and as you progress you get access to more unit
classes and more units in that class. For example once you are allied with the Purifiers you can
start creating Sentinels,
Energizers and Colossi which are damn
awesome, they were so powerful and could shoot so far that I often just sent a
group of them forward and then attacked with the bulk of my forces as they
usually set themselves too far away from the group and the faster ground troops
run in and get themselves killed. The Solar Core is where you
upgrade the ship with support options and man I tell you what the ‘Deploy
Pylon’ and ‘Mass Recall’ abilities were awesome allowing you to both pull your
forces back to base to set a Pylon down to warp more forces out to the field,
this coupled with the “Warp Harmonization” ability allowing Robotics facilities and Stargates to
have warp in abilities was almost too powerful, but then again all the upgrades
over the course of the singleplayer story were anyway.
Distributing the Solarite for upgrades on the Spear of Adun
The Colossi go nuts and my forces also go nuts at the end of the the Templars Return mission.
The missions were as varied as the last game in the series
with the usual attacking/capturing points on the map, defending points on the
map and hero-only quests. You also had missions where you had to do this while
avoiding rampaging Zerg which weren’t aggressive but still weren’t on your
side, rush to stabilize a huge space platform and get to your targets before
they are destroyed by a slow moving laser. One of the more interesting missions
was the Rak’shir
where you had to help Al’arak in a ritual battle so that he can be the leader
of the Tal’darim, I enjoyed this one as it was very different as it was a kind
of reverse tug-of-war you had to crowd your units around him to support him and
eventually throw his opponent off the cliff into the pit. This actually
reminded me a lot of The
Search for Illidan except that one was very much like a traditional tug of
war.
The Rak'shir
With general gameplay I had the issue again of having just too many units
and not knowing what the fack each one did, I tried to have similar units for
certain missions for example using mostly Dark Templar unit equivalents on
Shakuras or when Nerazimwere prominent
and the Tal’darim units whenever it was that storyline but still there was 4
different Protoss factions and not all of them had their own version on a unit
so it was a bit hard to manage, but it really didn’t matter too much. There’s
not much I can talk about without spoiling the story but I did enjoy all the
levels where you were just playing as the heroes, I loved this as you only
needed to worry about them and not build a base and organise a whole army at
the same time. I didn’t have too much trouble getting through the story as it
wasn’t too hard I had done it all before. Starcraft has a pretty gentle
learning curve and if you’re playing it on the easiest mode it’s not bad at
all, the Protoss were fun to play as I always liked their race and story and
their speech oh man some of the exchanges were great though a bit formal but
then again I like formal dramatic speaking.
Alarak in Vorazun in the ruins of Antioch on Aiur, this particular series of missions had you controlling only two "hero" units.
The Epilogue
missions were quite challenging even on the easiest game modes though they
could be beaten with careful planning. You had to play each of the three
missions as a different race and going back to the Terran and Zerg races was challenging as I was not used to them at all, especially the final one where you played as the Zerg. The three final missions
finished off the trilogy of Starcraft 2 into an ending that was a bit too happy
for the likes of myself and my brother but it finished it off nonetheless. The
graphics were awesome as usual they looked great with my new 980ti graphics
card and the sound and music was as good as before, there’s not much else to
say about it apart from the cutscenes being as brilliant as ever, I swear
between Blizzard Starcraft 2 and Bioware’s The Old Republic I’m not sure who
makes the better 3d animation hah.
The faction prepare to enter the Void in the epilogue
I had had a few brief forays into the
Multiplayer, only for LAN parties of course I don’t think I have ever once
played online, I also haven’t played the Co-op missions and
I’m not sure if I have done the Tutorial as
well. I could probably skip that as I don’t need it but I could play the Co-op
with my brother. Playing others is always fun, I actually had a victory against
someone else which won me an SSD at Lanslide, and I’ve always enjoyed playing
RTS when it doesn’t matter if you lose, same goes with all multiplayer really,
in fact I really must try it more but then again it’ll be back to the building
then getting killed again and again and I’d actually have to try to get better.
My 1v1 victory at the Lanslide Lan
So that finishes off the Starcraft 2 Saga, I’d like to say
we’ve come a long way but it’s just been sporadic bursts of play, the question
is, what now? Will there even be a Starcraft 3? Will there be another Warcraft
RTS at all or will we just be inundated with MOBAS?
Only time will tell.
JD
The only think that really changed here was the story so I’m
not gonna bother with a detailed description what I liked and didn’t. It was fun I liked
it, it was pretty much the same as before but the story was better so I’ll give
it 8/10
Release date: April 28, 2015 
