The Past and Times of Yore: Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Let's get the hell outta here

Release Date: June 1st, 2006
Genre: First Person Shooter
Publisher: Valve Software

Developer: Valve Software
Platform: Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Mac OS X, Linux
Players: 1
Classification: M (Mature)

Yes here it is, Half Life 2 Episode 1, oddly named title I know, it’s basically the first episode after the original game which I did a review of in the past. Episode 1 was actually meant to be called “Aftermath” but was changed to Episode 1 to support valve’s episodic structure. I obtained this game by purchasing the Orange Box which contained five games: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 and it’s true what they said about it, it really was the greatest deal in gaming history, even if I did already own Half Life 2.

Episode 1 is basically starts right after the end of Half Life 2, you have a brief intervention by G-man where several Vortigaunts appear to save Alyx and also block G-man who is perturbed by the experience, which is interestingly the only time you see him in episode 1, it then cuts to DOG pulling you out of the wreckage with Alyx close by.

A shot from the humorous situation where you and Alex get into a junked car and DOG throws you into the Citadel.

Basically the story revolves around you and Alyx trying to escape theCitadel and City 17 in general, which I quite enjoyed actually, at the start you get reminisce about the end of the previous game seeing some recordings of Dr. Breen and a Combine Advisor as well as an actual Combine Advisor trying to evacuate the Citadel and also encounter the gruesome Stalkers along the way. You end up stopping the Citadel’s core meltdown and have an amusing Razor Train ride before crashing into the sewer systems underneath the Citidel in some awesomely frightening pitch black tunnels where you encounter lots of zombies and the new zombified Combine soldiers who Alyx dubs “Zombines” hah!

The pulsating Citidel Core

After a while you get back to the surface and continue fighting along with other resistance members similar to the Anticitizen One and “Follow Freeman!” chapters in the Half Life 2 story. I love the start of this chapter as it features Dr. Isaac Kleiner who has taken over Dr. Breen’s public broadcast system and reports to everyone that the Suppression Field has been deactivated and basically they should all “give serious thought to doing their part for the revival of the species" in which Alyx remarks that Kleiner is telling them to “get busy”. The ending is one of the coolest scenes where you race to evacuate citizens to a train station then jump on one yourself just in time to see the citadel exploding behind you.

The Citidel exploding as you watch from the train, dang if we were just faster.

 I enjoyed this shorter experience of Half-Life as I enjoyed the areas in the Citadel probably the most from the previous story so this one was pretty damn fun though there was a bit too much use of the Gravity gun, I always like “let’s get out of here” storylines in games and this was a good one. The pace of this story really works and having Alyx with you all the time is pretty cool too as she has infinite bullets and can finish off any annoying enemies such as headcrabs which you couldn’t be bothered wasting ammo or switching to the crowbar for, the episode focuses on story development mostly between you and Alyx and goddamn it’s getting heated but nothing yet. I always wonder how they would pull of a story of the two of you working together without ever explaining why Freeman never talks though they do and do it well even if Alyx is doing all the talking.  As far I could tell the only new enemy were the “Zombines” though you have more contact with the Stalkers as in HL2 you just see them randomly throughout the citadel. You get to see a few new parts of the Citadel and City 17 itself though there are no new characters introduced, my favourite parts are when you encounter the Combine advisors and get assaulted by their physic blasts.

Stalkers preventing Gordon and Alyx from continuing into the Citidel, you never confront them directly just shoot powerballs and roller mines at them.

Controls and base gameplay are basically the same though the graphics have had a small upgrade to the Source engine and a new version of its facial animation/expression technology. I felt that there was relatively few places and things in Episode 1 that made me go WOW! It’s strong point was basically the mostly face-paced story that made you keep on going, the music helped a bit too with its pumping techno and eerie haunts in the darker sections and the sounds were as good as ever. I don’t really have much to say apart from that, there was some general consensus about the game being particularly short but for the price and package I got it in I have absolutely no problem with that, besides this one is just a prelude to what will probably be an awesome 3 part series.

The main menu screen where you can listen to Kleiner giving his freedom speech which is a hoot to listen to.

Of course you probably have all  already played the first and second episodes years ago and are waiting for the third and final conclusion if it ever comes, well we’ll discuss that in my review of the next episode.

JD

Forget saving humanity, first we have to do our part, priorities people.

An Android and his Nexus: Battlefield 4 Commander and Battlelog App

One of the mains reasons I wanted a tablet was so I could play some tablet-only apps such as the Battlefield 4 Commander App, and once I got my Nexus 7 it was one of the first things I got. I did a review of Battlefield 4 back in April and spent a part of it complaining about the Commander mode requiring you to sacrifice your player slot to be a commander whereas in Battlefield 2 the Commander was an actual player in the game. The Commander app is a bit finicky to start with as you have to download the Battlelog app as well, so basically you can go into either one first for example if you start up the Commander app and click server browser it takes you into the Battlelog app then when you join a server it goes back to the Commander App. The Battlelog app is pretty much identical to what you see on the browser version and it also syncs your profile and settings data so you have the same favourite servers and history etc which is a great help, it’s relatively simple to navigate but can be slow and laggy at times.

Looks familiar... that's good

So basically once you find a server you can join as the Commander and be amazed at how fast the damn map loads lol in stark contrast to when you’re playing the game and have to wait there for almost a minute. The battle screen is a simple and mostly colourless view of the battlefield you have your commander tools on the left and your squad info the right, with your usual other information such as chat log, menu and scoreboard buttons, time and score. There are three types of assets that you can use as a commander, these are Default Assets, Main Assets and Squad Assets.

Main screen on the Golmud Railway map, you can see the default assets up the top left, then main assets then squad assets in green.

Default Assets

Defaults assets are things like UAV scans and marking high value targets, these are always available to you but all have their own cooldown.

Scan UAV                  
Deploy an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), which spots enemies in the area.

EMP UAV                 
Deploy an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) UAV, which hides activity in the area from enemy Commander. This causes damage to the enemy cruise missiles and gunship.

High Value Target
If an enemy soldier reaches a killstreak of 6, Commanders can highlight them as a High Value
Target (HVT) for their team. The player that kills this target within a short time frame will receive a
bonus along with the commander, and each kill this HVT makes while targeted will earn him a bonus.

Evac Order                         
Warn allied soldiers in the area of incoming danger.
Order                                   

Give an order to a Squad Leader to either attack or defend an objective.

You can see here by the dark patch that the enemy has used an EMP UAV and I have placed a High value target which in this case is a bomber jet.

Main Assets

Access to the main assets usually depends on which flags your team currently has captured as each one is tied to a particular flag, sometimes when playing the game as a soldier it’s good to know which points give the commander what resources as you’d want the one with the Gunship at all costs as it’s one majorly powerful asset when it’s in the air allowing up to 3 people to man 3 different types of guns.

Infantry Scan                    
 Spot all enemy soldiers on the mini-map.

Vehicle Scan                     
Spot all enemy vehicles on the mini-map.

Proxy Attack                     
Disable the Enemy Commander for 10 seconds

Cruise Missile                   
 Launch a cruise missile at an area, destroying all enemies in the area.

Gunship                              
Deploy the AC-130 GUNSHIP. When the gunship is deployed it will circle the base that it is tied to. Your team can deploy in the gunship and parachute from it.

In this particulat instance my side has capture points B and C which allows me to use the Infantry Scan and Gunship assets

Squad Assets

As the commander you can select a squad by touching them and assign them to either attack a neutral or enemy flag or defend a captured one, after a while I worked out that when you issue an order it appears as a dotted line and if the squad leader complies and tells his squad to attacked that flag it becomes a full line. I vaguely remember this in the actually game now being loosely represented by a sort of triangle around a flag that your Commander wants you to capture. Anyway when your squad orders and obeyed and the squad works well together it adds to the Squad Asset bar which is on the bottom left in green and depending on how high your squad asset bar is you can do one or more of the below. Each of these assets cost a different amount of “chunks” of the bar going from promote squad to vehicle drop.

Asset

Promote Squad                
Promote your squad.

Supply Drop                      
Deploy crate via parachute, which automatically heals and gives ammo to nearby soldiers. Allied soldiers can also switch kits by interacting with the crate.

Rapid Deploy                     
Reduces affected squads’ deploy time.

Vehicle Drop                    
Context-sensitive parachute vehicle drop – Personal Water Craft (PWC) or a quad bike.

My squad asset bar is full here so I can use whichever one I like

There’s also a voice option so you can talk to the squad leaders, I haven’t really used this but I have heard someone speaking at some times, too hard to hear what they were saying though. I found that people aren’t that obedient most of the time, it’s only when I was in Japan that the quality of play, chat and obedience really went up, figures huh? There are 4 types of ribbons/medals you can get for playing commanders including:

Leadership - Receive 10 order followed

Surveillance – Obtain 10 scan bonuses

Resupply – Obtain 10 supply crate uses

Gunship  - Deploy 2 Gunships

The Commander app main screen with my commander medal and ribbon information and my beautiful portrait.

Though for the most part the points you get are nothing compared to the points you get when actually playing as a soldier, but I suppose there’s got to be a compromise there somewhere. One thing I found recently was that there was a fair few servers which didn’t allow for Commanders. I suppose that would be because a lot of people don’t like the extra level of difficulty with the Commander around especially when your side doesn’t have one and the enemy commander is pummelling you with cruise missiles and gunships and giving their team the extra advantage, there’s a setting in the server search which allows you to check that the server allows Commanders anyway.

Yay a server that allows Commanders!

Overall I found the app to work pretty well, there was some unexplained server disconnects but nothing that doesn’t happen in the main game, it’s fun to use if you have the opportunity to play and help out your friends, not to mention get some extra points for you soldier. It will never be as good as Battlefield 2 with its assets and commander physically on the battlefield but it’s still a bit of fun for when you’re not at home and need that Battlefield fix.

JD


A short video of the Commander app in action on a Nexus 7

The Past and times of Yore: Spyro 2, Gateway to Glimmer, more features, more friends and some more good stuff

Release Date: November 5th, 1999
Genre: Platformer
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment

Developer: Insomniac Games
Platform: Playstation
Players: 1
Classification: E (Everyone)

Awhile ago I reviewed the classic Spyro the Dragon, one of my favourite games ever so I decided to continue the aptly named “golden-age” of the Spyro series with Spyro 2: Gateway to Glimmer (named “Ripto’s” Rage in USA).

Gateway to Glimmer introduced quite a few new features to the game, first off the story introduces many new characters, some of which become a mainstay in the series appearing in several more games. The Professor, Hunter the Cheetah, Elora the Faun, Zoe the Fairy and Moneybags the Bear all make their first appearance as well as one of Spyro’s most notorious opponents Ripto as well as his hench-dinosaurs Crush and Gulp. Basically the story is that the Professor, Elora and Hunter accidentally allow Ripto into their realm of Avalar and Elora prevents him from going back by getting the fairies to spread the orbs all over Avalar. They then decide to get the help of a Dragon to get rid of him. Meanwhile in the Dragon Kingdom it’s raining and Spyro and Sparks decide to go on a holiday to Dragon Shores which is a vacation spot in the Dragon Kingdom but are intercepted by the Professor, Elora, and Hunter and are instead transported to Glimmer, which is the first realm of the game. The focus this time around is basically to defeat Ripto so that Spyro can go to there for a vacation, there’s no actual explanation given about the gems you need to collect this time (apart from needing them to pay Moneybags), I vaguely remember Elora commenting that you had to collect the treasure though the Orbs and Talismans are needed to progress through the game but the treasure is only to achieve %100.

The Professer, Elora, Hunter, Spyro and Sparx  near the portal from the Dragon Kingdom

Playing this game for the first time you can really see the changes, after he and Sparks have a short conversation with the Professor, Elora and Hunter, Elora gives you you’re Guidebook that is used to show your progress in the game. Interestingly the game starts in Glimmer which isn’t a homeworld but a realm, and you don’t actually go to the first homeworld of Summer Forest until you finish the level. You then automatically enter into a conversation with your first npc character Bounsa the Gemcutter who fills you in on what s happening in the realm and what they need help with, and as you progress through the level you meet other NPC’s who have various jobs and dilemmas for you to solve.

Spyro with one of the Gemcutters in Glimmer

They then reward you with Orbs in which they always have a different explanation for giving them as they never have any idea what they are, at the end of the main part of the level you meet a final npc who gives you a Talisman and then you gotta run around and find all the treasure and orbs you need to fully complete the level. Another slight change that you may not notice is that you can activate a map for the bottom left of the screen, but I didn’t bother using this much as the layouts are not really that confusing.

One of my favorite Talismans, the Idol Springs Jade Idol.

 Once you have completed Glimmer and go through the portal you find yourself in Summer Forest which is the first homeworld in which I did notice that it and the rest of the homeworlds no longer have enemies in them just the little creatures to flame, so they are basically safe apart from the ever-present abyss in most Spyro levels. Here is where you find several of the new characters such as Hunter the Cheetah who acts as a guide for various activities and you come across him fairly often throughout the game where he gives you various challenges in reward for Orbs he is also found in the various Speedways where once you have completed the main timed challenge you can find him or another character for another challenge unique to the speedway which include things like flying through rings while paragliding. Another new character (and way of saving your game) is Zoe the Fairy who zaps Sypro with her wand at certain locations throughout a level every time Spyro walks under her to save his game.

Hunter in the crystal cave in Magma Cone, these two orbs you get are one of the harder challenges.

Lastly, Moneybags the Bear is quite a character with his pompous British accent and dress, he charges Spyro lots of gems for services in realms such as extending bridges opening doors and activating portals and also trains you in various abilities which  include:

Swimming: Spyro can now swim on the surface of the water, meaning that not all sections of water are just pools that you drown in, Spyro can swim in almost all bodies of water apart from lava of course. Swimming is pretty fun, you just use the charge button to dive underwater and also charge enemies as you obviously can’t use flame, you can also swim along using the x button, I loved it the first time I did it as it adds a great alternative to the usually gameplay controls and collecting gems, especially when most of the level is underwater.

Climbing: This one’s fairly self-explanatory, there are walls with “ladder-imprints” on them which Spyro can climb and jump across.

Headbash: Spyro can headbash by pressing triangle while jumping and can break most contains inc the “headbash specific” ones.

These abilities are learned by talking to Moneybags and paying a “small” fee, they are learned in each of the three homeworlds. Often you can’t get %100 on some homeworlds and realms until you can get a certain ability where you have to come back to later.

Swimming is great fun, especially wiping out pots and enemies while zooming through the water.

Other then these changes Spyro has relatively the same controls as before, he can jump, glide, charge and is protected by Sparx the same way as before. A new ability is that when you are gliding you can now press triangle for Spyro to hover upwards a bit then fall giving you that last little bit of height needed as opposed to the previous game where if you misjudged the glide there was really nothing you could do but fall, Spyro also loses his L1 and R1 side rolling ability. Defeating enemies this time does not always yield gems but adds a spark to the Powerup gate which when neough enemies are defeated gives Spyo abilities such as superflame, supercharge, superfly, invincibility and spring jump which is pretty damn fun.


Me re-doing a gliding and hovering challenge that Hunter takes you on early in the game, was a cinch the first time too :D

Another feature which I am very glad they added is the “Gem radar”, when you press all shoulder buttons Sparks points to the location of uncollected treasure, man that saves a hell of a lot of time searching around. Spyro now interacts with other characters a lot more, before it was just the one line of Dialogue when you rescued the other Dragons, now you see a Dialogue box pop up when talking to the various different inhabitants of that particular realm which you can talk to for additional dialogue even after they have finished your initial conversation.

A dialogue box that appears in the game.

The realms in the game are fairly diverse in this instance as you go from places like Sunny Beach to Skelos Badlands. There seems to be much more technology around now with realms like Metropolis and Robotica Farms compared to the first game where the worlds were more fantasy/medieval with only a few parts where Gnorcs used electricity or industrial objects like steel and cannons. There are some levels which feature larger amount of water sections such as Aquaria Towers where you help the Seahorses to fill up the towers with water. Spyro also has various new animations where when he touches lava he now jumps in the air with a burnt derriere until he loses Sparx and then gets burnt to a crisp as well as the angry slap he does when he falls into the water while flying in the Speedways which also make a return in this instalment with a bonus feature of you being able to find a character hidden somewhere in the level with a special challenge for Spyro which is always done with Hunter or from Hunter himself.

Aquaria towers is a level where you are under the water almost all the timr.

The graphics in the game are mostly fine, I again used an emulator to play the game so it looks much better than playing with the original Playstation, the locations may look slightly more cartoonish and not as beautiful as the first game. Though there were still some very beautiful locations including: Summer Forest, Magma Cone, and Zephyr which were some of my favourite looking places even Hurricos which is in a constant stormy state of rain, dark clouds and patchy sunlight looked amazing. The design and architecture of the levels is good too, with places like Skelos Badlands.  and Fracture Hills really fitting into their theme with the building design.

Hurricos, one of my favorite looking zones.

The emulator does make the models look so much better with the anti-aliasing options though unfortunately it doesn’t quite work with everything, I could see that the sparks from explosions and the sparkles that Sparx emits (lol that’s fun to say) are basically just yellow pixels. You can also see that any large non-3d text or graphics appear slightly pixelated as well, but these are minor things. The overall look and feel of the game is great and even though the locations in Avalar aren’t quite as equal in beauty as the Dragon Realms they are still a slight step up in detail from the previous game as you’d expect with a new installment.

Who sees some pixelated sparks! and Sparx! lol

 The music in this instalment of the game is great as before, there’s more of a variety of instruments  and sometimes voices which are used prominently at the start of a soundtrack, this is especially the case in Scorch, Shady Oasis and Colossus, I think Colossus has one of the best soundtracks in the game. Although this game retains basically the same kind of music from the original, there are a few gems here and there (pun intended) which are pretty damn good with some of my favourites being, the music from Magma Cone with it’s upbeat action-oriented feel and the calming Summer Forest tone (which is the same for all home realms) are great to listen to and especially come back to after completing a level.


The Colossus level music

The sound effects are good as usual and not much has changed from the usual sound effects and skips and jump and flame breath. Some of the audible cues are back such as the bouncing of an orb somewhere in the level which works the same way as a dragon rattling in crystal. Though the biggest change has got to be Spyro’s change in voice, in the first game he sounded very childish and naive, though since the voice actor change to Tom Kenny he seems to have matured a little bit and has a much more pleasant personality and I must say I liked him much better in the 2^nd and 3^rd games.

Spyro 2 was a great advancement in the Spyro series, it couldn’t obviously be the masterpiece that was the first Spyro game but it did everything it could to improve and it did it well, improving sound, graphics and introducing new game feature and abilities for Spyro. As I mentioned before this was the 2^nd game in the “Golden Age” of the Spyro series on PS1 which culminates with Year of the Dragon. I’ve played this game many times though once you’ve actually finished the game there is little to do, the replayability comes with going through the whole game again and as always I highly recommend playing through the original PS1 sytem, emulator or the Playstation store as it is one of the best games on from the PS1 era.

JD

Story - 9
Gameplay - 10
Graphics - 9
Music - 10
Sound Effects - 9
Play Time - 9
Replayability - 8

Overall: 9

Older, wiser and friendlier.

An Android and his Nexus: New Post Title Introduction

Well here I go again, another post type, I have finally delved into the untouched (for me at least) realm of mobile gaming. The title comes from when I was preparing for a trip to Japan with my martial arts group (I do Iaido) and I decided I should get a multimedia tablet for internet, email and gaming cause I didn’t want to use my phone all the time. Funnily enough I decided on an Asus Google Nexus 7 (2013 Model) for a few reasons which I’ll detail below.

• It runs on Android

• It has a powerful CPU and graphics erm chip or card I don’t know what they have.

• It was cheap! (only $305)

• It has lots of storage space, I got the 32g model which has 26gb free 

My main screen in landscape mode, I managed to pretty much copy all of the apps from my phone,  the time/date and weather widget isn't a built-in feature

There are some drawbacks such as  7” screen which is only slightly bigger than those giant Samsung galaxy note phones and also I got the wifi-only version so I’d need to be connected via wifi to be able to use internet. However these are a minor issues, the way I see it if I got an actual gaming handheld such as the PSP it’s only 4.3 inches which is the size of a regular smartphone anyway. The other thing was I didn’t want to pay for a whole other phone plan for my tablet either, so I got got this nifty little thing called the TP-Link TL-WR702N 150Mbps Wireless N Mini Router Atheros which basically allows you to create a Wifi hotspot from a normal Ethernet port supplying internet.I also got a case to go with it which was one of those thin shell black ones which fit nicely and had that feature where you close the front it automatically switches off the screen and it came with a  free stylus that I love to use as it’s a bit more accurate than your finger for pressing those little links.

Me holding it in portrait mode, the orange bit the the case

 The main reason I got this was for my trip to Japan, (which was awesome by the way) and the Nexus 7 delivered, the screen is great, it’s really fast, I wasted no time setting it up with all my options and most of the apps I had from my phone, it works fine from my wireless internet at home after a bit of mucking around. I was going to try and use Juicedefender and Adblock Plus but unfortunately the Juicedefender kept cutting out the wifi and Adblock plus didn’t really work. After I fixed those two issues the tablet was running much better and pretty soon I had loaded up on various different apps I wanted inc MX Player which plays all types of downloaded movie files where android will not. On the trip itself the time on the plane flew by with me with me mining it up with Minecraft Pocket Edition or going old school with GTA3, and yes that is on the Google play store for Android  even San Andreas is on there, I could scarcely believe it though I spose it was pretty old and these things were pretty damn powerful, so why not.

My games and bookmarks screen, up the top right is the general controls tabs such as wifi and birghtness.

I ended up getting a collection of games as there was an android equivalent of most of the games I play, I’ve detailed whole list below. It truly is a good gaming device, there’s even a Steam App

Pegland and Pegland Deluxe – This is just basically an Android version of Peggle though not as good but that’s usually the case with free games.

Boing! Pow! Zing! Isn't the same as Peggle though

Battlefield 4 Commander and Battlelog App  - These are one of the main reasons I got the tablet, I like being the Commander though it’s nowhere near as good as it was in BF2, I just like the idea of commanding a match while your friends play. When I was playing this in Japan they were damn obedient I can tell you that.

Oh the responsibility!

Grand Theft Auto  III – The old favourite, I chose to play this one as I’d played San Andreas recently and wanted to go right back to the (almost) beginning, plays pretty wellbut would really love a controller for it.

I don't know about you but I kinda liked good old Claude from GTA3, especially at the start of the game.

  
Minecraft Pocket Edition – You could probably see this one coming, though there is a few features that are missing or different to the PC, the main one being finite worlds.

Edge of the world, that just ain't right man.

Ravensword 2 Shadowlands – This is basically Skyrim just lower res and slightly different, less Dragons maybe.

This will be much easier with the MOGA pro

Real Racing 3 – There were a ton of realistic racers though this one was pretty good, couldn’t exactly find a test drive unlimited equivalent

Hey who recognizes this place? the developers do, as they are based in Melbourne.

Order and Chaos Online – They basically could have called this World of Warcraft for Android, top notch MMO for a mobile device.

Looks familiar doesn't it?

Clumsy Bird -  Of all the Flappy bird clones this one is awesome, it looks great and can even play online with others seeing how far you can get within a set time period.

Multiplayer fun!

Repulze – This is basically Wipeout except with less focus on tricky tracks and ship flying and more on shooting. Have to try this one yet.

Off road sections? reminds me of Wipeout Fusion, ugh oh well I'm sure it's still better

These three were put on by my friend along with a whole bunch of others, these were the only 3 I kept.

Angry Birds and Angry Birds Space – Yep you know what these are, tbh I may delete them as I really don’t see the hype.

2048 – An interesting numbers game that I can’t quite work out, it’s pretty damn popular though.

Plants Vs Zombies 2 – Another well known one, is pretty cool but I got kinda bored of it after a while.

The TP-Link router was really good as the wifi in the hotel was average at best, I really noticed the different when I beefed it up with the internet for the port, I actually had to go get another adaptor plug for the adapter plug that I had as it was an older Japanese plug. So apart from a few issues I had some good nights of gaming while in Japan. Screw arcades hey?

Ahh gaming home away from home.

So basically after explaining all that this post title will be about the games I play on my Nexus 7 using Android, hence the title, haven’t exactly decided what the first post will be but we’ll see. As a final note I’ve bought a MOGA Pro controller for my Nexus 7 so I may leave any games that I want to try with the controller for later and focusing on the ones that I only use the styles and some touching for, that sounds kinda weird actually.

JD

I’m through touching I need hands-on

Diablo 3: Time to put the Hammer down, or pick it up rather

My relationship with Diablo 3 or Diablo in general has been a bit of a fleeting affair I did do a review of it mid 2012 not too long after it came out, having tried to play Diablo 2 and not liking it, this installment wasn’t much different and I concluded with it being a good game, the action RPG genre was just not for me. Though unfortunately I was left without the proper closure as I didn’t actually finish the damn thing as I got sick of it. A time later due to much hype about the coming Reaper of Souls expansion, I thought to myself that something needed to be done about this as I had to finish it at least once before the expansion came out (not that I was going to get the expansion anyway). As I pondered playing it again.

Two heroes to the rescue! *tromp, tromp, tromp* I like my glowing hammer in this shot

 I thought to myself that it may have been the fact that I was using a Monk and although they were pretty cool, the fact that they did  not use their weapons with most of their attacks was kind of disheartening especially when they weren’t fist weapons. I tried Mage first as I really wanted to see what Mage was like in an action RPG, but after about an hour of slinging spells around it just didn’t have the same effect a proper melee character. As I’d found the most fun playing medieval fantasy games recently being a basic warrior type character I decided to go Barbarian as it seemed to fit the hack’n’slash genre the best.

I'm not sure whether this was a hack or a slash, looks like a slash but I was using an axe so you never know.

 I started off well as I always like starting from the start, and man do you start off bare, literally. The Barbarian is basically only wearing boots and undies at the start and is carrying a tiny axe but you soon get more armor and get beefier. I liked the Warrior abilities such as Hammer of the Ancients, Cleave, Rend, Revenge and Whirlwind and I learned to use them at the right times and combinations. One of my favourites was Call of the Ancients which summons 3 ancient warrior who kick a lot of ass, man if you ever needed an “I win” button this was it, click it and all of a sudden there’s five of you kickin’ ass all over the place. It didn’t take me long to get used to the Warrior, I swapped between a one-handed weapon and shield and a two-handed weapon on several occasions making sure I adjusted my passive skills accordingly. I used the Templar most of the time as he had good healing and defense skills I liked the idea of two juggernauts smashing up the demons, I did use the Scoundrel and Enchantress at times but by far the best thing was to hear the banter between them especially when the scoundrel was involved, the Scoundrel was also pretty good when fighting with you as he had a few funny comments.

Ah gold old straightforward Templar, call me boring but there's something I liked about him.

Loot was a bit better in recent patches but it was still a bit of a pain to sort through all the crap and outfit myself as well as my followers, I found most of the time I was glad to see portal save points as I could go back to home base and offload all the junk. I realised that my Blacksmith and Jeweller level was still the same from when I stopped playing with my Monk so It was good to see the recipes that I could get though a lot of the time once I had something made I got something else in the game that was better, but that’s just loot I guess. So I slammed and hammered and whirled my way through most of the game with the blinding intent of just finishing the damn thing though I couldn’t help but appreciate the graphics and artwork, especially the cinematic which were some of the best I had ever seen, well I spose it is Blizzard making them, seriously is a good looking game though. There was some pretty grotesque bits in the Tower of Sin walking past those flay demons, felt pretty good to kill that spider bitch afterwards.

Tyrael's Sacrifice, probably my favourite cinematic from the game.

I was majorely hyped when I got up to Act III again at Bastion’s Keep and was going to see for the first time the invasion of heaven or whatever it was called. I kicked the shit out of all the demons as well as Azmodan himself and finally got to Act IV where you go to heaven and assist the angels there. I liked the moment when Tyrael faces up to Imperius again but he’s still an arrogant bastard after all that you and Tyrael have done . I did most of Act IV with my friend Lachlan as I thought I’d need some help defeating Diablo though it turns out he was so powerful and I was playing on the normal game mode that we just kicked the crap out of everything. He mentioned that certain bosses were really hard usually and that I probably didn’t like the game cause I was bored cause it was so easy but I didn’t agree. So we got up to Diablo and kicked his ass then the game was over. 

IM'A FIRIN MAH LAZORR! (Lachlan was a great help)

 Frankly I was glad I got that out of the way, the Reaper of Souls expansion is out now with a new Crusader and a new story twist to follow in Act V, frankly I couldn’t be bothered and won’t be paying any money for it though the new trailers and features do look pretty impressive especially the Nemesis Monsters

My view of Diablo III stands as before, it’s a good game and I had a bit more fun this time but it’s just not my type of game though I’m glad I got through it eventually.

JD

"Uh Tyrael? I think we got a problem"

Now Bul’Kathos!