You know I never intended for these to be annual updates,
but I guess they are, as I’m always updating once around the same time of year,
so I guess it’s that time again. As far as the playerbase is looking the game
things are pretty bleak, as of July last year there was another big server
culling with the game going from 17 servers down to just 5, pretty scary for a
game that once had 200. But it matters not, until they shut down the servers
completely I will keep on going, as I’m not finished yet, not by any means,
despite a couple of requests from friends to start playing Elder Scrolls Online.
Doin some heroics on Balmorra, was glad I got the chance to do em with someone
So we begin with my Trooper and the conclusion of his
storyline which occurs on Corellia which in case you didn’t know I the planet where
all class storylines conclude. But actually before that Havoc Squad was off to
Voss for the conclusion of Aric
Jorgen’s mission to rescue his old Deadeye squad companions on Hoth, and when we found that two of
his squadmates were dead due to a careless Republic officer so I decided to let
Aric shoot the bastard.
Senior Agent Zane gets what's coming to him.
I’ve been doing Dark side options a lot more now while
playing, maybe it’s because quite a few companions I have prefer the naughty
things. From the start of the game I’ve had many characters who were very
light-side orientated, on my Jedi Knight T7-O1 and Kira Carsen
were good examples of this, on my Sith Inquisitor it was more difficult being a
Light-side with Khem
Val but as soon as I got Ashara Zavros things got easier. Playing my Trooper
was a mixed bag, Elara Dorne was very light orientated, Aric Jorgan
and M1-4X were
mostly fine but their fanatical devotion to the Republic favoured some Dark
side choices and towards the end of the storyline I just started choosing them
for a change of pace, I didn’t use Tanno Vik or
Yuun much at all but
Tanno is definitely Dark side orientated. I guess after playing purely Light
side characters for so long I wanted to have some fun with dark side options,
and you can have some pretty
messed up fun indeed. Also I am actually seriously considering creating a
female character as either the a Sith Marauder or a Smuggler Scoundrel it’ll be a
bit weird romancing guys but then again it’s the same thing you’re just on the
other side.
Companion's play a large part in your class story, but you don't always have to do things that get their approval.
I actually regret not promoting Aric to Lieutenant now as
when I decided to promote Elara that was for the selfish reason of trying to
curry favour to get into bed with her, but that was the time previously where
you needed to build influence with your Companions in order to continue their
story but now this happens progressively as you complete each story chapter. So
anyway after that it was on to Corellia, another city planet with a confusing layout like Coruscant. The
story was mostly about the Empire vs Republic and the showdown with General Rakton which I
and the forces of the Republic collectively kick his ass, I’m not sure whether
I killed him or sent him to jail but I think it was the latter. At some point I
had decided to replace my green
striped armor with orange striped armor and a new helmet in an attempt to
standardize the squad colours in preparation for the coming grandiose
congratulatory ceremony and meeting with the Supreme Chancellor.I decked my
squadmates out pretty well all except for Yuun who had appropriate
armor on but I forgot to change the colour, oh well, they still looked good.
Havoc squad in full force
I’m finding the new adaptive/customisable gear vendors on the fleet are a great
source of custom gear as an alternative to the Cartel Market especially when
you hit level 60 where you start receiving only Knight of the Fallen Empire
gear which all looks the damn same. I’m basically building collection a set of
‘Outlander’ and upgrading it as I obtain more gear from the Command crates
though I’ll have to work out how to get the gear to the character as the Fallen
Empire chapters are basically just go-go-go and I have no idea when the first
mailbox is though I suspect it’s at the Gravestone but even then
that’s a couple of chapters in. I have decided to do Knights
of the Fallen Empire on my Trooper as I want to see what it’s like when you
do it with a non-force user though I feel like doing it with my Imperial Agent
as I reckon he’s my favourite character at the moment.
Doin my part for the battle of Coreillia
So that was that, end of the storyline for my Trooper, three
class stories down, 5 to go, hopefully I get through em. It was then on to my
Consular Sage who was sporting some pretty cool looking white and bronze gear.
With the start of the Consular Chapter 2, I was tasked with finding a group of
leaders of various planets trying to break away from the Republic called
the“Rift Alliance” and to do this I was to be a Jedi Master! so I graciously
accepted of course then went to their ship which was being attacked by the
Empire so I saved them and met them all, one of which was a future companion Nadia Grell
which was odd as she is the last companion you get so it was strange to see her
so early. Then they end up being passengers on my ship, geez I don’t even think
the Defender
had enough bunks. I enjoyed the process though as in this chapter I’m really
doing a lot of mediation work and keeping all these ambassadors happy, which is
fun because some don’t trust me and it involves a few arguments. So we first
went to Balmorra to assist Tai Cordan and met the future
companion Zenith
who is a Balmorran resistance fighter. So I go to war with Darth
Lachris (again) and reluctantly slash through her fit body with my
lightsaber (though all female bodies of that size are the same really) and pick
up Zenith along the way who I now use as a ranged tank. At one point I decided
to use the ever popular adaptive gear vendor to make myself a new more-consular
style armor set which looked pretty good with the orange highlights.
I like this shot, even if my armor is a bit glitchy
So then I’m off to Quesh and finished it off pretty fast and
I also find out Nadia has force aptitude, then we go to Hoth after yet another costume
change from the adaptive gear vendor. This time I added this really strange
headpiece which seems to be some sort of weird leather visor around my head but
It’s cool and as it’s highly unusual think it looks ok on the consular. On Hoth
I defeat some more Rift Alliance enemies and another companion, Lieutenant Felix
Iresso, I save the King and Queen of Sarkhai and also find out that one of
the Rift Alliance ambassadors on my ship Blaesus is a special Sith called a
“Child of the Emperor” and I kill him and another random Sith called Lord
Kyrus. And that was that for the chapter, next up I’m back to the Academy again
to check on the Noetikons.
Lookin good, me of course not that guy's arse
Bounty Hunter time again and from what I can remember I was
still on the perpetual-night-time-though-only-for-the-Sith-Empire-instance
planet of Taris. Here is where I had met Torian
Cadera and we were hunting his dad cause his dad was on the bounty hunter
blacklist so after a pretty cool scavenger hunt over Taris to find Jincoln
Caldera, Torian and I found him and turned him over to the Mandalorians. Not
much else happened though I managed to do the heroics on this planet and soon
it was on to Quesh for a very
short amount for a very short amount of class story where I am invited to
endorse some battle stims then find out it’s a republic trap, I also did the
planet storyline which didn’t take too long. It was then on to Hoth and I
defeat a Trandoshan
Warrior with the help of Blizz the Jawa
who then joins the crew. I didn’t finish off the story but I did re-mod the old
orange and maroon insect themed outfit I had on before it got outdated rather
quickly as now I am level 70 I won’t be getting any new armor.
Heroics again, I like this shot
Now it was time for Knights of the Eternal Throne except this time
on my Sith Inquisitor, not that it’s much different from a Jedi really it’s
just down to the choices you make, and I did make some different choices this
time. Firsty I decided to kill Supreme Chancellor Suresh instead of sending her
to jail, I also decided to leave Vette
to die instead of Torian and possibly most important of all, I decided to rule
the galaxy as an emperor instead of heal it as a peace keeper. Surprisingly
this didn’t give my allies too much ire of me, Theron and Lana and everyone else just
seemed to accept it with no private conversation expressing anything, and now
they say “May the Force serve you” wow. So after that I went to do the brief Iokath storyline where this
time I sided with the Empire of course, and this time Jace Malcolm got the old hot
seat messin’ with the Iokath chairs. But after that was finished I had had enough
and moved on.
A lot goin on in this shot
Before I have been thinking a bit about what I’m going to do
with the future of my characters and SWTOR in general, specifically with my
Jedi Guardian and Sith Inquisitor, I can’t call them ‘max level’ characters as
because of the ridiculous speed in which you level up almost all of my
characters are max level now . Anyway they have now both done their individual
class stories, Ilum/False Emperor story,Rise of the Hutt Cartel/Makeb Expansion, Rhakgoul Outbreak, The Dread
War, Shadow of Revan, Knights of the Fallen Empire/Eternal Throne and the
Iokath war. There’s always something to play when I come back to them but once
I’ve finished that do I stay and look for more things to do, operations?
flashpoints? other high level content? Etc I guess it depends what’s currently going
on in the server, whenever I’m on the fleet on whatever character I’m always
checking the chat to see which ops
(aka raids) are going on but with less and less people it’s getting harder..
And that’s what did, While playing my Imperial Agent Sniper I saw a call out
for the last boss of The Ravagers Raid, Coratanni. So I moved to my
Assassin and did the raid, I was a bit disappointed that it was only the last
boss, but I still managed to get to Rishi first and get the main quest in order
to complete it and boy did I also get a lot of command xp and items.
The Ravagers Raid final boss, Coratanni
Now back to what could possibly be my favourite character at
the moment, my Imperial Agent Sniper, you may have
seen in my previous post that I had finished Balmorra and you may also know that
because I did this on a two week special event of triple xp while levelling I
was level 61 when I finished the planet. I decided that I had levelled too fast
and acquired all of my abilities too quickly. I also wasn’t happy with a lot of
choices I had made on the way and decided this time to go full badass. My
reasoning for this was if I was going Dark side on my Sage then I have to go
Dark on at least one Empire character and technically my character is supposed
to be a cyborg but I was roleplaying that I’m actually a droid so I got no
feelings, which definitely makes things easier. The other thing that makes
things easier is thatKaliyo as annoying as she is prefers the Dark side
options so this was good at least. So I decided to cut my losses and transfer
any items I wanted and sell off any I didn’t or were bound to me. Unfortunately
I had already put on my Series 212 Cybernetic
set binding it to me so I had to buy the damn things again but I had all the
credits that I needed so I bought it again and thankfully it wasn’t too
expensive. I also might have to end up wearing the a helm similar to the Citidel Duelist’s
set which I wore on my Sith Assassin as it’s a perfect helm both with voice
modulation and even moving droid eyeballs though it’s a shame I already used it
with my Assassin, the only other ones that could come close would be the helm
from this setand that helm which looks like General
Grievous which I’ve forgotten the name of.
Kaliyo and me, a entertaining relationship
And so I started again going through Hutta, Dromund Kass and
then Balmorra making different choices along the way and boy was I bad, I can’t
think of any light side choices I made. Speaking of Light and Dark side
choices, I may have mentioned this before but on my Sage I am going Dark Side,
but I forgot to set myself as “Fighting for the Dark side” on my “Force
Alignment” feature thingy so I ended up just gaining more light side points
which I didn’t want. So now I don’t know what I’m going to do I wanted to see
my Jedi Sage all evil with the Dark side effects on his face but I’ve wasted
all this time going Light side and I don’t think I’ll ever get be able to get
to full Dark unless of course I want to go through every expansion like I have
with my Guardian and Assassin. I am going full Dark with my agent though there
are a couple of problems, as you might have seen I got the “White pupil” cartel
market item for my Agent who is supposed to be secretly a droid, and one of the
first effects of dark side corruption is yellow eyes, so there goes that side
of the corruption as I’m not getting rid of my white eyes, and then of course
I’m going full on droid so I won’t see anything anyway which sucks, so If I
don’t get my Sage onto the Dark face (heh) I’ll have to do it with either a
Marauder or Smuggler. Anyway so I conquered Balmorra and killed Grand Marshall Cheketta this
time and boinked Darth
Lachris for the third time and it looks like I’ve still got the Balmorra
bonus series to do but then my subscription ran out.
You makin fun of me boy? These eyes will be the last thing you ever see.
After some deliberation I have decided to get HK-51 on my Agent as he uses a
Sniper Rifle and with us both as Droids we’d go well together though I’m not
looking forward to the questline
as it seems pretty involved, I hope I can get someone to help me. But anyway
that will be in the next time I get on my Agent, for now it’s on to my Guardian
and the mysterious ‘Crisis on Umbara’ flashpoint of Game update 5.4.
Release date: October 7, 2016 Genre: Action-Adventure, Stealth
Publisher: Lince Works, Merge games Developer: Lince Works Engine: Unity Platforms: Windows, Linux, PS4, OSX Modes: Single Player or Coop Campaign
I have fond memories of stealth games, or simply choosing
the stealthy option in games such as Skyrim
and Far Cry, I even
refused to play the Witcher
series simply because you couldn’t really stealth. Though the greatest of all
stealth games in my view was Tenchu,
playing Tenchu
2: Birth of the Stealth Assassins on the PS1 and Tenchu: Wrath of
Heaven on the PS2, lately I have had the good fortune to be gifted an Xbox
360 from afriend and now have the
ability to play Tenchu Z though It’s not exactly
of the quality of the previous games I’ve mentioned it’s at least something.
It is I, the Aragami
But this was
actually before I had the Ex-bax Tree-Sixty and was having a long drought of
stealth games, I had tried to go back to Tenchu 2 using an emulator on my
android tablet but it just didn’t really feel the same (does it ever?). So when
I saw Aragami on Steam I was fairly
interested. Why wouldn’t I? it had a Japanese theme, a cool looking ninja-like
character and of course stealth and stealth kills, it was cel-shaded but looked
absolutely amazing so there was nothing wrong with that. The setting for
Aragami is in a sort of fantasy feudal japan with lots of mystical magic
elements, it tells a somewhat cliched story that you, the Aragami, or ‘an’
Aragami I’m not sure, were summoned by an ‘astral projection’ of Yamiko, a girl
whose ‘Nisshoku’ kingdom of shadow was defeated by the ‘Kaiho’ kingdom of the
light and she is now held prisoner by the Kaiho and she has summoned you to
take her revenge and rescue her, and I’ve only just realised now this was all
done in one night.
Yamiko as she appears in one of the graphic novel cutscenes
Yamiko returns on occasion to give you advice and show you
the way towards the main castle, you do actually converse with her sometimes
which apart from overhearing the guards conversation is the only comic relief
in the game. So anyway you have the setting, the story, the struggle between
kingdoms, the bad guys, the damsel in distress and you, the unlikely hero etc,
so now this is where it starts to differ from Tenchu and I’ll try to not compare
them over the course of this review hah.
Yamiko in the game world, she appears and dissapears at will, often just speaking in your head.
As the Aragami you
are a being made of shadow and vengeful spirit, and thus your powers come from
shadow and your weakness is light, you must always keep to the shadows. For
reasons I’m not sure why your character can’t actually jump instead you
use the right mouse button and click another patch of darkness to “Shadow Leap”
through to it (similar to Dishonored), allowing you to silently move to ledges
or through light sources to stay in the shadows. Of course to do this you need shadow
power, shadow power is accrued (surprise, surprise) when you are in the
shadows and it’s level is cleverly displayed on your cape, moving too close to
light sources drains your shadow power but you can gain it back easily. Though
I’ve had some scary moments where you can get caught out in the open when an
enemy walking towards you and end up frenzily clicking around looking for a
shadow to jump to, but this gets easier when you start to gain more ability
such as the one where you can ‘summon’ a shadow in a particular area as an
escape route.
I achieve the highest rank 'S' in the first level by complete stealth, this was the only level I was able to manage it XD Moving near any light sources drain your shadow energy so it’s no
wonder enemies walk around or near them to make it more difficult for you to
get past, the ‘Kaiho’ soldiers have light embued weapons and if you do get
spotted they can kill you with one hit, so usually when spotted I often just
give up and start again from the quicksave if I can’t get away in time. There
are only a few variations of enemies, there are the basic light-sword wielding
enemies (who also have a medium range light-beam slash) and then there are the
archers who aim beams of light as if they were snipers, shooting a ball of
light in a location if they detect something. These balls of light act like
mines and can kill you if you stray too close and be found more frequently in
the later levels, blocking off paths and forcing you to shadow leap through
them or take a different path. some enemies actually walk around with these
ball of light surrounding them making them difficult to stealth kill.
Archers were particularly dangerous if not taken out first
An emphasis on
stealth in this game is paramount primarily because you cannot even swing your
weapon in normal combat as you are only seen using it in stealth kills or
sometimes destroying glowing orbs that control force fields. Unlike the Tenchu
games if you are spotted there is not staying to fight and finish them off
unless you are quick with your abilities as you can be killed in seconds. There
are only two “boss fights” in the game and neither of them have you engaging in
full-on combat, it’s really down to stealth and using your powers. Speaking of
which you use these powers for pretty much anything, you can’t jump, open
doors, climb ledges or up ladders, you are relying on shadows for everything
more complicated then walking and running which makes you feel a bit fragile,
which you are I guess you’re just a damn shadow heh. Conveniently you start in
a very dark graveyard, then as the game progress there becomes less and less
shadows with you having to rely on your ‘shadow-creation’ ability to get
places.
Ares like this required careful planning and tagging of enemies (if you had the ability) to see their movement around obstacles, especially if you were doing a complete stealth run without eliminating any enemies.
Your main arsenal
are your abilities which include offensive, defensive and Aragami abilities.
These available are gained by finding scrolls hidden throughout the levels, the
more you find, the more abilities you can unlock so being the only the
collectible in the game too they are fairly important. The Aragami abilities
include very useful skills, such as hiding bodies, ability to cast shadows and
allowing your Raven companion to keep track of enemies and even revealing the
location of hidden scrolls. The defensive abilities include summoning decoys,
invisibility and revealing enemies through walls. The offensive techniques
include a lethal shadow dart, a blinding wave of shadows and an entertaining
‘mine’ type trap which pulls enemies into the void. These abilities can usually
only be used twice before requiring a cooldown but can be accessed again by
performing a “Shadow kill” which is sort of like an advanced stealth kill which
takes about 1.5 seconds to activate and then unleashes shadow dragon head which
swallows an enemy whole in spectacular fashion. As you can guess all these
abilities work well when used wisely though I didn’t use many at all, only when
I was in a tight spot, but only now watching a video of someone else using them
I understand a bit more.
Here I try out a custom map and use a few shadow abilities, I also try out the map editor
I tried to play
this one the usual way I play Tenchu, lots of stealth killing, minimal
weapon/item use but I quickly found that it was actually more encouraged to go
complete stealth though it was harder. There were a few bonuses including not
dying and respawning, not alerting enemies and complete stealth and I’ve
actually just learned now that you cannot obtain the highest “S” rank if you
kill any enemies. I thought this was a bit annoying but it’s ok I guess as it’s
much harder to stealth through the level avoiding the enemies instead of
eliminating them as you go, I did still get a good score by defeating every
enemy but I guess that’s still not the point. This is a good change as
historically with the Tenchu series it didn’t seem to matter how many times you
were spotted as long as you did enough stealth kills to bump your score up so
you got Grand Master every time.
Got spotted way too many times here.
Like Tenchu also I found myself getting too
impatient and getting caught out leading to some bad scores, sometimes I tried
to avoid but the amount of enemies in a level was quite large some places it
seemed almost impossible to get past without getting rid of at least one enemy.
As you progressed it got harder leading to more mistakes, you start of the
first few level being very careful then after the 6th level you just
want to get through it as your objectives don’t really change, each level
involves getting from one place to another without being spotted or dying and
involves stealthing or killing enemies and also clearing “force fields” that
block your way by finding the orbs of light that generate them. There’s only 12
levels but it did get slightly repetitive.
Chapter VI: Mausoleum of the Fallen was a difficult one, it was like a huge museum filled with light and archers and guards everywhere and made movement difficult, ended up trying to kill everything and got a horrible score.
Probably the best
thing about the game is the graphics, the cel-shaded loveliness of this game is
amazing, not to mention the beautifully drawn comic-style cutscenes. Unlike
games which are trying to be photorealistic and end up overdoing it sometimes
the visuals are sharp and just flows and I’m going to stop before I sound like
an artistic wanker. There’s not exactly much colour in the visuals as the game
takes place over one (very long) night but it’s anything but dark, the moon is
always out and shining bright enough to cast moonshadows everywhere (which you
need) and the enemies are champions of the light so there’s candles and
lanterns and fires and glowing swords and bows and orbs all over the place all
of which makes a very bright night, of course if it was an incredibly dark
clouded-over night then the game would be too easy wouldn’t it? You progress
though several different areas, including, graveyards, towns, forests, lakes,
castles and temples and I noticed the colour hue of the visuals change, from
blue in the graveyards to green in the forest for example.
The game had this beautful haunting feel, this shot is mostly dark but I think it looks really good.
Though your
character was well detailed the enemies I loved the effects of the shadow
abilities and just the way you and your cape shimmers in the darkness and light
and I could probably say this is my favourite cel-shaded game, though I haven’t
played much apart from Katamari Forever which I didn’t really
like with that sort of graphical style. As for the music and sound it’s fitting
of the subject material, I was impressed with the way the voice acting was all
in Japanese as this definitely wasn’t the case in Tenchu though having all
Japanese voice acting did make the storyline sound a bit dull as everything had
this sort of formal tone to it. There isn’t much music but when there is it’s
appropriate, it’s more like ambient sounds then the occasional spasm of music,
no that doesn’t sound right, tremor of music? Anyway it really did sound
like a game set in Japan and the haunting sound effects and Japanese cultural
themed soundtrack was great.
One of my favourite places to hide heh especially good for listening to enemies conversations, I was impressed that they did have Japanese voice actors.
Aragami also has a
two-player co-op mode which is pretty cool as you don’t see it much anymore,
though I’ve yet to try it, I’ve seen it in action in some videos and like the Sniper Elite games doing stealth
co-op requires some practice, probably even more so as you’re relatively close
to the enemy. There is also a fairly detailed level editor, which harks me back
to the days of messing around with the Tenchu 2 level editor though I’m not
sure if this one is more detailed but it certainly is polished with the items
you set on the ground coming falling down and bouncing onto the ground with a satisfying
‘plunk’ I’ve played some (quite hard) user-created missions with it and yes I’m
proud to say someone has attempted to remake one of the most famous Tenchu
missions though not correctly as it’s rock hard, and then there are your usual
experimental challenge levels where you have to get from one side to another
alive. I didn’t spend too much time with the editor as I didn’t have any big
plans for it though If I really wanted to I could re-create a Tenchu 3 mission
though that would require a lot of screenshots which I can’t get on the PS3 and
screenshotting a youtube video would just take too long and be too annoying.
Here I try out several fan-made levels and also make an experimental archer-infested custom map
Overall Aragami is
one of those games that I almost love/hate to play similar to L. A. Noire, Katamari Forever and of course Tenchu. I wanted
to do so well but ended up getting impatient and not doing well enough though
this could be down to the fact that I wanted to play it just like I did Tenchu
with my “weapons and abilities are for the weak” mindset where I try to stealth
kill everything and everyone which of course always seems to end up with me
being spotted multiple times. But this always comes down to how the game is
scored which is different from the Tenchu games where as I’ve said before this
one is focused on stealth as a necessity for survival rather than a way of
making things easier for yourself.
Well, I've really messed things up now.
When you were spotted in Tenchu you had
more than enough health points, combat abilities and even armor in some cases
to be a force to be reckoned with, especially Tenchu Z which has so many combat
moves you can unlock though there’s only 2 boss fights in the entire game.
Aragami Is a stealth game very much based in the mystical ancient world, you
aren’t a Ninja in the traditional aspect, you’re a creature of shadow and all
of this is fine, I’m just glad stealth games are still being made. And what's more I hear there's a prequel expansion in the works..
JD
8/10
Things I liked:
Genuine Stealth
game
Excellent Cel-shaded
visuals
Smooth Liquidy
animation
Cool abilities
Things I didn’t like:
Very fragile
protagonist
Lack of objective
variety in levels
Too much reliance
on shadow abilities
Aragami release trailer
Oh, I'm bein'
followed by a moonshadow, leapin and hoppin' on a moonshadow…
Well I'm back, first post of 2018! you thought I was gone, I thought I was gone too, especially with that last post but it looks like we're back on, and what a game to start with Battlefield 1! Can't quite believe I wrote over 4000 words, guess I had a lot to say. Anyway welcome to 2018 and hopefully a good year of blogging ahead. Release date: October 21, 2016 Genre: First Person Shooter Publisher:Electronic Arts Developer: DICE, Uprise, Criterion Games Engine: Frostbite 3 Platforms: Windows, PS4,Xbox One
Modes: Single Player Campaign and up to 64 Player Multiplayer
I can still
remember the hype when it was revealed that the new Battlefield (BF) game would
not be set in a modern-day era. This announcement came after the release of Call of
Duty Infinite Warfare and I’m sure you all know of the rivalry between BF
and CoD or the fans rather and so while call of Duty rocketed into the future
the Battlefield series was going back to the past, you could imagine the glee
we all felt where we thought for a second we would actually be getting a HD
remake of Battlefield 1942. But no, we weren’t going back to WW2, the series
had already had a Vietnam based expansion too, it was revealed that the
fifteenth installment to the Battlefield series would be loosely based on the
events in World War 1 or based on World War 1 or a Battlefield game with a
World War 1 skin I’m not sure which one is the best way to explain.
Anyway the
new game came out with a bang and quite an epic trailer at that. My
housemate was very interested being a staunch fan of Battlefield 1942
and also its predecessorCodename
Eagle which was arguably the first of all the Battlefield games and the
only one previously set in time of the first world war but occurs in an
alternate timeline. After seeing the trailer and some of the parodies that were made
for it, he decided with the help of myself and a few others to create a parody trailer
using Codename Eagle itself. I enjoyed the process and it worked out really
well, we had a LAN party and everything and we got quite a few comments on the
video too. We spent a lot of time playing the demo Sinai Desert map
which was quite large and featured almost every form of vehicle and weapon
(except sea) I did notice now and in the trailer that there was a large
emphasis on vehicles which is unusual for World War 1 as it was mostly known as
an infantry war as per games like Verdun, but then again this
is Battlefield and it’s the vehicles that rule.
Sinai Desert as shown from above
In any case, there was a lot of hype leading up to the release of the
game, there was so much shit talking about how Battlefield
went into World War 1 while Call of Duty was going into space with its Infinite Warfare, I of
course wasn’t really too fussed. After Battlefield 3 I didn’t care that much
about what happened to the game as it was now all the same, I never bothered
with the Police-themed Hardline as
it was basically just the same thing reskinned, the same gameplay, the same
graphics just little things changed similar to the new Star Wars Battlefront 1 & 2 it’s the same
freakin game all over again and I was expecting Battlefield 1 to be exactly the
same. And as you can probably guess I wasn’t wrong, you remember the total
conversion mods for your favourite games? it’s the Battlefield WW1 Total
conversion we have here.
Though maybe I’m being a little too harsh, the singleplayer
was ok I guess, It was a more enjoyable then Battlefield 3 and 4as it was composed of 5 (and a half)‘War stories’ instead of one storyline so
there are mini campaigns which show different theatres of the war.
Unfortunately the authenticity just wasn’t there, a lot of over-the-top action
in unrealistic scenarios but there were good bits there too and it’s a
Battlefield game after all.
There's even a sequence where you control a messenger pigeon
The first ‘War Story’ Storm
of Steel is basically a prologue where you take control of different allied
soldiers fighting the Germans in a trench wasteland. The second Through Mud and Blood was quite enjoyable as
you take control of a Mark V Landship
though most of the time you are jumping out for some stealthy kills and
reconnaissance but the tank battles towards the end were good.
Detail is incredible in this one.
Friends In High Places was probably my
favourite, you were a fighter plane pilot and were in the plane most of the
time also finding your way through no-man’s land and even walking on a
Zeppelin.
The pretty epic but entirely fictional "Fort et Fidele mission
Avanti Savoia! was a short story where you play as
an Italian Shock Trooper who wears a suit of armor and carries a large machine
gun. This one was probably the most ridiculous as it seemed like you were this
invincible space marine from the Warhammer 40k series, literally you were
walking along mowing down German Soldiers like a one-man army, I felt this was
so far removed from a realistic WW1 perspective it was silly, why the suit of
armor? I actually saw soldiers wearing metal armor and helmets in the game art
and certain classes in the multiplayer modes wear it too. Though it’s strange I
never really saw this in any WW1 photos or footage and most movies and shows in
WW1 the soldiers do not wear any kind of metal armor, but then again this is
Battlefield so mowing down enemies with an LMG (technically though the one he
holds doesn’t seem that light) and suits of armor are consistent with the
series I guess.
Almost steampunk-esque
The Runner was the Australian-Gallipoli based one which
was ok, you played as an Australian message runner for the British at what was
supposed to be Gallipoli and did a lot of running and gunning. Nothing Is Written was probably the best one,
you were a female Beduin warrior fighting the Ottoman Empire with good old T.
E. Lawrence himself, you did a lot of stealthing through the desert and
around the camps and it was fairly open ended which was really good.
This mission was really good, you had to infiltrate three Ottoman camps in the desert and either eliminate the commander and steal the documents or both, it was very open ended unlike the usual linear-path gameplay from most other FPS story-modes.
So anyway on to the multiplayer, the new Battlefield Companion replaces Battlelog
though this is inside the game itself so you no longer need to launch from a
web browser and get those annoying update version errors and have to download
the individual file just for the server list. And speaking of server lists
after a lot of crying about how the new Star Wars Battlefront
had no server browser Battlefield 1 thankfully has one though there’s enough
people playing not to really matter to be honest. It’s only if you’re looking
for a particular gameplay type like War Pigeons or the
options of having rifle only deathmatch similar to Verdun
which is regarded as the number one simulator in the trench warfare area though
unfortunately these modes are not very popular with the average Battlefield
player. This is one of the main problems with Battlefield nowadays, it’s a
groupof players who want the same old
thing and they got it.
The new-look main menu: beats the old battlog I gotta tell ya
As I mentioned I tried out the multiplayer demo on the Sinai
Desert which was super awesome as it had everything in it, it was fun
trying out the horses and flying the new planes and driving the new tanks. The
kits ere relatively the same as usual, the Assault
was the main anti-vehicle with Anti-tank Grenades, Mines, Dynamite and the AT
Rocket Gun which was a lot of fun. The Medic
has the usual kit, medic crate, rifle grenade, the new revive weapon is a
syringe which is just as weird as the defibrillators. The Support now
has some interesting toys available it has the usual Ammo Crate and Mortar but now has the Limpet
Charge and Crossbow Launcher the latter of which can either
shoot high explosive grenades designed to take out vehicles or Frag grenades
designed to take down enemy soldiers. The Mortar used to be very very effective
with the anti-infantry airburst rounds, so effective in fact that they nerfed
it so now it is almost useless, even the HE mortar pales in comparison to the
usefulness and mobility of the HE grenades and Rocket gun of the Assault class.
But anyway I still like playing the class, I can still repair vehicles though
now Tank Drivers and Pilots can repair their vehicles themselves without
getting out which kinda sucks for the usefulness of Support but we’re still
useful anyway.
The Giant's Shadow map was released some time after the main game, it featured a crashed airship as the centrepiece and heavy fog as you can see here. I play as Medic for this round.
And then there’s my guilty pleasure class, the Scout. I’ve
found many ways to make this class useful. I’ve found many spots to set up camp
and spot enemies with the Trench Periscope, this thing is basically the same as the
tactical visor in battlefield 4, it auto-spots enemies in a cone in front of
you and gives extra points if they are killed by your teammates. I’ve had many
a round where I’ve found a nice spot set up a Sniper
Decoy and camped, yes camped I spotted enemies and took pot shots at both
infantry and vehicles thanks to the quite useful K
Bullets, I also set up Tripwire Bombs so I was
definitely helping my team to all those camping naysayers out there. It seems
that hiding in a bush (or whatever) seems to be my preferred playstyle as it
was way back in Vietcong,
is currently in PUBG,
and is while playing the Scout class in BF1.
Me using the scout trench periscope and sniper decoy
Among the new features there is a greater emphasis on melee
combat with the new insta-kill bayonet charging
which I keep forgetting to do and when I remember to do it I always just run
in, not hit anyone and get shot. The melee combat does seem more refined with a
chance for the victim to fight back rather than the attacker having the full
advantage but to be honest it’s still just furiously clicking your melee button
and hoping for the best. There is now more options then just knives yes there
now spades, clubs, hatchets, pickaxes and weapons designed for the new mounted class
such as the Cavalry Sword and the Elite classes such as the Raider
Club.
Speaking of the Class system, it’s gotten a bit convoluted
now so I’ll list them below:
Infantry classes
Infantry classes include Assault,
Medic, Support and Scout,
these are now similar to Battlefield 1942 but still only 4, the Engineer
type weapons have been divided among the Assault and Support classes.
Vehicle classes
Vehicle classes include the Tanker, Pilot and
Cavalry (if
you can call a horse a vehicle I don’t know) are similar to the Pilot
from Battlefield 4 as you didn’t spawn in the plain with a full kit, you just
had your pistol and few other things. This is the same with the Tanker and the
Pilot you have a different loadout with includes handguns and repair tools and
other utilities. When I heard Cavalry was being
introduced I wasn’t sure what to think and honestly I don’t use it much myself
I prefer it in a Medieval setting such as Mount and
Blade Warband though riding a horse with friends was fun none the less, the
Cavalry also has its own kit which features a Cavalry
Sword which is heaps of fun to use if you time it right. I had a few rounds
where we all tried to get on horses and be mounted infantry like the
Australians in the Battle of
Beersheba.
Elite Classes
Elite Classes replace the weapon pickups around the map in
other games, they spawn randomly in specific areas on the map and can be picked
up by any soldier who will then be transformed into that class until they die
or the round finishes. The Elite classes include the Flame Trooperwhich is pretty self explanatory, the Sentry which
is similar to the Avanti Savoia! War story where you are an armored MG
wielder, the Tank Hunter which is armed with a heavy rifle that can
disable vehicles, and the Trench
Raider armed with melee weapons and grenades who was released with the Battlefield 1: They Shall Not Pass
expansion.
There's a Flame Trooper in there somewhere
Now we come to the subject of vehicles, now as you know
Battlefield is a game that is known for having vehicles but when I think of
World War 1 I think of trenches and soldiers and artillery and horses and gas,
I don’t really think about tanks, but there actually were tanks, and there were
planes lots of planes and boats and motorcycles and a lot of things if you
think about it. So BF1 still has lots of vehicles though they took a bit of
getting used to going from the very Modern BF4, I’ll start with the light
vehicles which included the scout cars, new armored cars and motocycles with
sidecars. As with all light vehicles in Battlefield these are vulnerable to
just about anything and should be used only for transport and skirmishes, that
said I really enjoyed zooming around on the bike and the armored car was fun
too. I never really thought about tanks much in WW1 but there are three in the
game, there’s a light tank though when I have the ability to spawn a tank I
usually go the Landship (from the ‘Through mud and blood’ war story) or the A7V which is like a moving
fortress of a tank. This one was quite funny because in the war these things
were very slow and impractical being only able to go 15kmh on roads and 5kmh
over rough terrain though in the game the tank is quite fast and can scale steep
hills easily if manoeuvred correctly which is ironic but I bet DICE had to make
it that was so they would be at least of some use.
Driving the heavy tank, you can see my emblem on the side.
I have never been very good at planes but I had a lot of fun
trying out the fighter planes and using the keyboard to manoeuvre and got a few
kills in some rounds, I spent most of my time being a gunner for my friend Brok
who really knows how to fly them. I suppose you may be wondering at this point
how I went with repairing vehicles and for those of you who don’t know I quite
like being the support class and doing this. One of my favourite things to do
in Battlefield 4 was to sit in the lightly armed and armored transport chopper
and repair it while someone else flew which really helped as those things were
huge targets and usually didn’t last long. Well unfortunately in this game
there is no way to repair a vehicle while inside it, when spawning a vehicle as
a pilot you have the ability to self-repair on the fly when driving, the
support class can repair with their hammer but have to get out of the vehicle
so in the case of planes that’s obviously not an option, but it’s ok I have
enough fun in vehicles anyway. I also like the way you can get different
version of the vehicles for example you could get the flamethrower tank upgrade
or the trench fighter specialization for the Fighter plane though you no sooner
chose that then get attacked by a tank or another plane, you can’t win really.
It’s sort of like trying to decide whether to equip a frag or HE grenade
usually when you spawn you find you’ll need the opposite one.
I found the planes a lot easier to fly compared to the jets in BF4, probably because they weren't so freakin FAST
Replacing Battlefield 4’s Levolution
events are Behemoths
featuring the Airship, the Armored
Train and the Dreadnought, these vehicles spawn later in the game on
the losing teams side in order to try and even things up. I’ve had a go at all
of these and they do make a bit of a difference but often don’t last long as
they are a pretty huge target, the airship especially. There was one game where
it spawned in and then the opposing team immediately started pelting it with 3
Anti-air emplacements and it didn’t even last 2 minutes, however being in them
is fun while it lasts and they have some serious firepower though I think the
best thing about them is just the spectacle of seeing this huge thing thunder
into the map oh and the explosions are awesome too, I swear I took so many
screenshots of exploding zeppelins.
Ooohh that's a good one
I spent most of my
time playing the conquest mode with friends as that’s all that seems to be
played these days but was intrigued by the new Operations mode similar
to Evolution
from Battlefield Vietnam. Operations take
players across an entire front of the Great War in a sequence of connected
rounds, with one team attempting to push the frontline forward by conquering
ground while the other attempts to defend their position. The next map played
depends on the outcome of the previous one, and the attacking and defending
sides will switch accordingly. This was great fun when doing it as it is much
more realistic and you have an intro and can see how the battle progresses. The
only problem with this is that not many people play it, most of the time when
we tried there was not enough people to start the operation. I also tried out War
Pigeons which was pretty ridiculouswhen you’re hastily writing a note then throwing a pigeon in the sky in
a hail of gunfire with your allies madly running around trying to defend you
but I guess that’s how it was.
The Operations selection main screen
One thing about this game I was impressed about was the
graphics, it’s probably the only thing I really enjoy the Battlefield series
for as it’s gotten kind of stagnate, I mean the Frostbite 3 engine looks great though I don’t know how much better we can get. In this game
actually I though they looked a bit over-the-top and colourful, especially with
the ‘Friends in High places’ campaign where there were explosions of sky and
clouds and colour everywhere though I digress, Battlefield isn’t exactly known
for being subtle, if it was a movie I suppose you could compare the war stories
to a cross between a Baz Luhrman and Michael Bay film. That said, everything
looked great, the amount of details was crazy as with most Battlefield games
these days and now that I have a 27 inch 2k screen with Gsync its gonna be even
better, in fact I don’t even think I’ve played it when my new screen yet. The
multiplayer maps are nothing less of amazing with rolling hills of green grass
or poppies, and hellish crater-pocked landscapes of mud and blood (like the
first singleplayer campaign) Of the initial maps a few stood out including Empire's
Edge and St. Quentin Scar both of which have beautiful countryside
landscapes in Italy and France respectively. As before I loved the maps which
had the full range of vehicles, I did get sick of maps that came up all the
time including Ballroom Blitz and Argonne
Forest which was the only infantry-only map though it still had the Armored
Train as the behemoth.
Although I didn't like Argonne Forest, it still looked pretty good
Playing with friends is the same as usual though it’s
slightly different again with the menu’s you can sort of add each other as a
squad through Origin to make sure you’re all in the same squad when you go into
the game, it took a bit of working out to get right, then choosing a server is
something else again, from the main menu you can choose four options. The first
Operations,
which are new to the Battlefield series, these are a series’ of maps in the
same theatre of war set out like a storyline with the attacking team pushing
the frontline forward until they conquer the map while the defenders must
reinforce and keep hold of it in a mode similar to Rush. This mode
looked very exciting as it would seem practical to play a series of similar
maps together while taking part in a grand storyline though sadly this mode
just doesn’t get enough players, they all just seem to just go to the regular
servers and play conquest like they always have.There is still the others modes such as Rush itself, the
entertaining War Pigeons and Team
Deathmatch but these are played sparingly with most people going straight
to the server browser and playing Conquest as before sadly. As I mentioned
before I enjoyed going Medic, Scout and Support and shying away from the
Assault class only because it’s the one that doesn’t interest me but then again
it's the one with all the anti-vehicle ordinance this time around. I do miss
being Support and hanging out of the chopper repairing it as this has now been
replaced with the Pilot and Tanker classes being able to self-repair, so it’s
basically same-old conquest mode and I’m again seeing myself playing around
with the Scout and Support toys such as the K Bullets,
Trench Periscope, Mortar and Crossbow Launcher.
With my Trusty Hammer I can repair anything
In regards to the expansions the only one I have been able
to play extensively is They
Shall Not Pass which introduces the French Army and arrived with new maps,
new weapons, new vehicles and the Trench
Raider Elite Class. Among the new vehicles was the ever-popular Saint-Chamond
Tank and the new Char 2C Super Heavy tank which is classed as a behemoth and
boy is it fun when you can actually get in it though I’ll admit not quite as
fun as the Rattetank
from the BF1942 Mod Forgotten Hope
Secret Weapon, man that is something else. In the launch there were 4 news
maps with the expansion though I was disappointed to find out that two of them
were infantry only maps. Soissons with its sunstroked fields is a great map
especially for planes and I’ve had plenty of aerial combat rounds there, Rupture is a
bit more gritty but the red poppies are a nice touch. Verdun
Heights is a rather large infantry-only map set in the artillery-blasted
forest of Verdun and Fort De Vaux is basically just Operation Locker.
This was annoying that when you just wanted to play the new French maps you had
to contend with two infantry-only maps where there was only one out of the 10
that were on release for the main game.
Squad work on the new French Expansion Rupture map, I play as medic mostly.
Unfortunately I have not been playing the game much at all
in the past months as this is due to the rise of the infamous Player
Unknown’s Battlegrounds and my usual ‘squad’ of buddies are now firmly
entrenched with this game with some being discouraged with BF1 and uninstalling
it altogether including my friend who was once so happy for it, so any foray
back into it would most probably just be on my own. Which is a shame because I
did originally purchase a premium account which automatically game access to
the rest of the expansions, In The Name Of The Tsar, Turning Tides and Apocalypse all of which are now released,
so I will definitely be having another delve in to see these at least once.
So on the whole Battlefield 1 is ok though it’s far from the Battlefield 1942
HD remake we’re all hoping for and sadly I think if it ever gets created it
will just be same old thing as Battlefield has been since BF3 and won’t have
the magic that made the original one so special.
JD
6/10
Things I liked:
Old-school feel of WW1 theme
Entertaining new vehicles and gadgets
Amazing graphics
Server browser included
Behemoths were fun and a good addition to the game
Things I didn’t like:
Same old Battlefield game with new skin
Not enough people playing new modes
Unrealistic take on WW1 especially in War stories
Support unable to repair vehicles while sitting in them.
Infantry-only maps should be abolished this Battlefield not
COD
The original reveal trailer
My friend Brok's Codename Eagle parody trailer
I miss helicopters because they haven’t been
invented yet
In case you haven’t noticed there has been no new post for a
while, this is because my work circumstances have changed recently and now I
have much less free time for blog writing. I’m unsure at this point whether I
will keep my blog going or not as when I do get spare time I much prefer to be
playing games rather than writing about them which begs the question, do I keep
going and update very sparingly and struggle to remember what a game was like?
Or do I play something then write about it keeping my blog very up to date but
not get time to play games much? or just shut down my blog entirely?
In any case it seems I will not be able to update as much as
a did before, I will still be posting videos on my Youtube
Channel and may update my blog randomly but I’ll have to have a think about
what I will do with it in the future.
In the meantime I’m currently playing GTA Online so much GTA
online, there’s a wealth of things to write about that I won’t even get started
and that’s not even mentioning the Doomsday Heist, I’m
going to need to do a ‘review’ of my April
2016 review as I have done so much more now, or dare I say another Post
Type? I also still playing Player Unknown’s Battleground and we are inching
ever closer to the game’s huuuuuge 1.0
Patch which contains many many things most notably the new desert map
‘Miramar’ and simply the ability to vault
over things. And lastly I have been playing some DOTA 2 with a friend and
as you can probably guess boy am I rusty, not that I was ever decent at it but
man I’ve had some horror rounds, but anyway, all in good practice.
Oh and of course, thanks for reading over the years, I’m
glad to have been able to continue doing this since 2011
