My Usual Spiel - Need for Speed 2015, The always-online-car-culture series reboot

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 Wanted  and 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. 

Wrong way down a one-way street.

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 acceleration  and 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 points  but 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 master  I 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 a bad 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.

JD


Need for speed PC Reveal Trailer

Can I not be a jack of all trades?

The Past and Times of Yore: Spyro 3, Year of the Dragon, the last of the golden age of Spyro

Release date: November 10, 2000
Genre: Platformer
Publisher: Universal Interactive
Developer: Insomniac Games
Platforms: PS3, XBOX 360
Players: 1 to 24

And so we have it, Spyro: Year of the Dragon, the third game in the series and the last one created by the famed Insomniac Games who have gone on to make the Ratchet and Clank series. And what a game it is, the main feature being the ability to play as characters other than Spyro more heavily this time as before it was only during the secret speedway challenges that you played as Hunter. Spyro really releases himself from his Dragon roots here by skateboarding and driving motorboats and hovertanks equipped with cannons, also driving submarines and frying enemies using Sun lamps. The story this time involves a celebration in the Dragon Realms where they are celebrating the Year of the Dragon which funnily enough the game was released in 2000 which was the actual Year of the Dragon. This event apparently happens every twelve years where Dragon Eggs are brought to the realm. In the opening movie the eggs just seem to be scattered on the ground and the Dragons including Spyro and Hunter are all asleep when Bianca and the Rhynocs pop out of holes in the ground and come to steal the Dragon eggs, she fortunately trods on Hunter’s tail waking them all up but they can’t stop her in time and hunter and another dragon get stuck in a hole. It appears that Spyro still really hasn’t got any larger and his small size benefits him again as he and hunter are sent down the holes to retrieve the dragon eggs. They soon find that they lead to the Forgotten Realms ruled by the Sorceress who needs dragons to bring the magic back to the realm and so the quest to take back the eggs begins.

Bianca and the Sorceress

 As you can probably guess the dragon eggs are the equivalent of orbs in this iteration though there is no longer any Talismans in the game, and every time you receive an egg there is a comically different explanation for finding it as Bianca and the Rhynocs had spread them all over the different worlds. You still pick up gems but they haven’t bothered giving an explanation as to why you are this time they are just there strewn all over the place and in possession of Rhynocs and other enemies. The homeworlds this time around are based on times of the day hence the first one being Sunrise Spring, I also quickly noticed that this time around almost all of the denizens of the worlds had foreign accents. I especially liked the fireflies in Spooky Swamp as they had French accents and only spoke in Haiku and the ducks in Frozen Altars who have the weirdest tone of voice I’ve ever heard in a Spyro game, they also now react when you charge or flame then accidentally which is a nice touch. As before the worlds are based on a variety of themed locations and natives, some favourites of mine being Crystal Islands, Fireworks Factory and Haunted Tomb.

Spooky Swamp, one of my favourite levels

The enemies in each level are a mixture of native wildlife including scorpions and mosquitos and the Sorceress’ Rhynoc armies which are humanoid rhinos but change dress/weapons according to the level for example in the Chinese themed Bamboo Terrace they wear Chinese dress and use fireworks against Spyro and in Lost Fleet they dress up as ghosts. A couple of characters make a return from the previous game including your now partner-in-crime Hunter who both assists you and gives you challenges with dragon eggs as a reward and Moneybags who is forever charging you for things, and of course a host of other cameos. As I mentioned before this version of the series contains a host of new (and one old) characters to play as which I will detail below.

Some Rhynocs dressed in flameproof armor

Sheila – A “mountain” kangaroo with an Australian accent, not sure why she lives on a mountain in Switzerland with some Swiss goats? Her level should have been in the outback. She can jump much higher and longer then Spyro

Sgt. James Byrd – A military penguin that can fly and equips dual rocket launchers.

Bentley – A Yeti who carries a giant ice club.

Agent 9 – A Sci-Fi Space Monkey equipped with a lasergun from the Professor’s island lab.

Sparx – Yes you can now play as Spyro’s trusty sidekick Sparx who has his own “realms” which are basically levels where you play as Spark from a top-down perspective.

Sheila the Kangaroo

These other characters were imprisoned for rebelling against the sorceress and you have to pay moneybags to set them free. They are lots of fun to play and gave you a break from playing Spyro all the time, I especially liked the old-school style Sparx shooters which reminded me of games like Raiden and 1943: The Battle of Midway. Completing the Sparx level also give an added bonus of special powers including being able to take one more hit for Spyro, collecting gems from further away and being able to indicate where missing gems were which you could actually already do all the time in the last game but meh. The Speedways also make a return though they have taken a major change, Sparx now talks to you and introduces you to the level, you can also now choose between taking the speedrun flaming and charging things within the time limit as usual but now there is a race option where you are in a race against the local racers of that world, for example in Country Speedway you are racing against the local biplane pilots.

The races are pretty straightforward but can be challenging at times as there is various speed boosts and collectible missiles that you can shoot at other racers and you have to remember to find and use these as much as you can as you actually start dead last with the first racer having a major head start and you need to work your way up the field but was great fun nonetheless. There are various cutscenes in the game showing Spyro and Hunter as they adventure through the Forgotten Realms helping people along the way and occasionally running into Bianca who is an apprentice to the Sorceress and her Rhynoc army who arrives to harass you at the start of each world. The other characters also have introduction cutscenes as you have to pay moneybags to set them free before being able to complete their homeworld.

A fun speedpad racetrack where you chase and egg Thief in Molten Crater, you also see the second run-in between Spyro, Hunter and Bianca

As far as controlling Spyro is concerned everything is basically the same you still have all of your abilities from the end of the last game and there is really nothing else you can learn, you have the same tutorial with hunter showing you how to jump and glide and occasional prompting but the new abilities come in the form of the new characters, I especially liked Bentley whose club packed a hell of a punch and could also deflect projectiles and Agent 9 who in most levels where he features you could find a hidden “laser upgrade” which made him able to shoot faster. Different areas in the levels were separated by portals this time around instead of being in the levels themselves, these often led to minigames involving egg challenges, these were again probably the hardest parts of the game as some were quite difficult (Damn Yeti boxing!) though I always enjoyed a speedpad challenge. Skateboarding with Spyro was an interesting new addition, even though there were only two areas where you could do it I found it lots of fun jumping around doing spins and flips and it worked pretty well for a mechanic that was kind of alien to the series. The bosses this time around were all pretty easy apart from the second one which was freakin hard as probably even more then the final boss. Speaking of which I actually managed to %100 the game this time which was probably my 4^th try though there was complications.

Skateboarding in the Enchanted Towers level, this is the second area you get to skate and it's the biggest and most fun i reckon.

The complications were that I actually got about 45% through the game playing on emulator, specifically the epsxe emulator which I often like to use for the much better openGL graphics and faster load times though unfortunately I found that I was missing one gem from the Midday Gardens homeworld, I looked and looked but just couldn’t find it, and neither could sparks even when he had the point-to-nearest-gem ability, I eventually decided to just start again on the Playstation as I thought it was a glitch with the actual ROM as I’d never experienced it before with the PS disc. So I did and completed the game with no trouble. After doing some research I found that it might be the Lost Gem Glitch but that only says it was for Spooky Swamp though I guess it may happen to other levels. In any case what that means is I only have screenshots/videos up to that point as I cannot take them on the PS1, the others I needed to find online, such is the case with these console game reviews which is unfortunate but I really don’t have another choice.


Those gems still difficult to find, I had to go through some levels two or three times to find them all.

The difference between PC openGL powered and PS1 graphics is pretty major but the graphics looked fine in the game regardless not much had been changed from last time apart from more animations for some characters and a bit more polish overall. I found that over time the game had gotten much more content in it (as it obviously should) this was most present in Spyro 2 but I feel that in Spyro 3 you really did things out of the ordinary. The sound and music were good as usual that awesome soundtrack by Stewart Copeland from the Police always has that magic to it, and even if the music from the latter games doesn’t quite have the same raw flair it is still memorable, I do like the way that characters you meet are still very talkative and as I mentioned before even have international accents now.

Alex the Duck from the Frozen Altars level, these guys had quite the weird accents

The final Spyro in the series was probably the most involved of the three, I liked the story of the previous one better but this one was ok, the original Spyro trilogy is definitely one of my favourites, possibly only being surpassed by Super Mario but this one feels more special as it was on Playstation so it’s not as well known as the Mario bros. series. As far as 3D platforming goes though this was the best there was, sure I had tried Super Mario 64 for a time but it just didn’t have the same feel, I still need to try The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time which is also considered by many as the greatest game of all time. In any case this one was the best for the Playstation and yes even more then Crash Bandicoot I think as his levels were way too linear though I have yet to play the original series so I can’t talk really. Basically apart from the new characters and mechanics and mini-games the premise of Spyro is the same, the same controls, the same charge/flame combo, the same challenge of collecting all the gems, the same albeit slightly more polished graphics, but all in all it’s a great a great character, a great game and a great trilogy and again I would mark the whole series as one of the best I have ever played. Next I move onto the dark times of Playstation 2 versions of Spyro but don’t worry they were not all bad.

JD

The trailer for Spyro 3, Year of the Dragon, unfortunately it's a bit low res.

Spyro is like Jet Li in the movie Hero, he isn’t concerned with romance, he’s just badass.

The Past and Times of Yore - Battlefield Bad Company, who needs multiplayer?

Release date: June 26, 2008
Genre: First-Person Shooter (FPS)
Publisher: Electronic Arts
Developer: DICE
Platforms: PS3, XBOX 360
Players: 1 to 24

For a long time I was only slightly aware of this game, I mean, I knew there was a bunch of games between Battlefield 2 and Battlefield: Bad Company 2 but I didn’t really care that much, I of course knew about Battlefield 2142 but I think around this time I was more occupied with World of Warcraft than anything else and the period between those two battlefield games just slipped away. Of course, there were more - Battlefield Heroes with it's cartoony graphics and third-person perspective, Battlefield 1943 which was a sort of console-lite version of BF1942, and Battlefield Play4Free which was a PC-lite version of Battlefield 2. When my housemate first mentioned  Battlefield: Bad Company to me I was confused, why had I not seen or heard this before? Then I remembered why I had gone straight to Bad Company 2 before playing 1, it was on console. Now normally I would not play any FPS (With the possible exception of Timesplitters and Goldeneye) on a console, but when the PlayStation 3 version of the game was given to me as a birthday present from my housemate I had to (or was forced rather) to do the right thing and sally forth into awkward thumbstick aiming yet again which I thought I had finally gotten out of after finishing Mercenaries. I had previously played Bad Company 2 both the singleplayer and multiplayer and had found the singleplayer enjoyable enough though I was told that the story, humour and squad interaction in the first Bad Company was much better.

Now this looks interesting

 The story begins when you are brought from a helicopter to the front lines, you play as Preston Marlowe who is a recent transfer and you soon find that Bad Company is much less formal then other military units being made up of troublemakers loose cannons from the rest of the army. Your squad consists of four soldiers Segeant Samuel Redford a battle hardened straight talking veteran who is about to retire, George Haggard a crazy demolitions expert who is the mad dog of the squad and Terrence Sweetwater, the snivelling nerdy one of the bunch who has a crush on the female dispatch officer Mike-One-Juliet who gives the orders to Redford. The action is located mostly in the fictional country of Serdaristan somewhere in eastern Europe though it is near Russia as you sometimes cross the border. Your enemies are at different times the Russian Army, the Middle Eastern Coalition and the Legionnaire Mercenaries. You start off all law-abiding and accepting of the military command’s instructions but after a while of playing the squad gets more and more rebellious eventually going AWOL to seek out the Legionnaire’s gold. 

The Bad Company Bros

Searching for gold becomes a feature of the game as you can find gold crates spread around the levels which act as a minor objective, another minor objective I found is that whenever you find a new weapon, it gets added to your ‘weapon library’ so you can collect them all. The story has a rather lighthearted feel despite the fact that you are killing people and blowing things up throughout most of the missions with Sweetwater and Haggard bantering and arguing with each other and playing rock-paper-scissors while Redford speaks on the radio, my housemate was certainly right in the fact that this was almost the opposite of Bad Company 2 where there was the same characters but they were much less juvenile in that iteration. I almost found the story a bit too comical as not only was your squad mostly a bunch of jokers and one of the only other characters you meet the President ofSedaristan had a humerous and nonchalant way about him and the whole story arc when you invade the country and romp across his golf course with the whole squad in a golf buggy eventually kidnapping him with his own chopper is pretty ridiculous. The only other character you see is the Legionnaire leader so apart from your squad that’s not much. But then again it was also fun and I guess this is what the game is meant to be, a military shooter with a humerous undertone and I’ll admit it was a lot funnier than the relative seriousness of Bad Company 2.

The Legionnaire and Zavimir Serdar

 So now we get onto the gameplay and of course yes I’m always going to moan about playing an FPS on a console but it wasn’t bad I must admit, felt even better then Mercenaries though that was 3^rd person of course. You could move around look, duck, jump etc as usual (but not prone) but if was the raw ferocity of the weapons that caught me the most off guard, they just looked so big on the screen and seemed really powerful and sounded great and you really felt it when you shot someone. Another big thing that was present in the game compared to Bad Company 2 was the freedom. Even when you were with your squad they just followed you most of the time. Some objectives were basically ”go to this point on the map” but to get there you could use any means possible, huff it on foot then find a town and steal a truck, drive to the water’s edge then commandeer a boat, stop the boat to infiltrate a random enemy base and steal a chopper then crash it into the objective. It was all doable, you could traverse the mission in almost any way you wanted to unlike the singleplayer campaigns in the latter games which felt very linear indeed.

You were given an objective and had the choice of how to get there

I enjoyed using different secondary weapons like the Bad Company iteration of the repair tool which I always liked compared to the blowtorch of Battlefield 4 and the rocket launchers which were also very satisfying to use. I even tried sniping at certain points which worked ok though it’s obviously hard to fine aim with it. The game had an interesting way of healing, instead of regenerating health, being healed by the medic or finding medkits you healed yourself with an autoinjector which led to a lot of running around shooting then stabbing yourself, then shooting then stabbing yourself again. I didn’t have too much trouble playing the game and using the controller it was pretty simple though I did play it on easy with the reason being that I was playing it on console, I enjoyed collecting the weapons and finding the gold and there’s just something fulfilling about completing an FPS storyline, I think it’s because unlike multiplayer you’re constantly getting kills and winning. Driving vehicles was fun though a bit different from what I am used to as you are using a controller and when you enter your vehicle your entire squad gets in and man any weapons available which is pretty cool, I found the tanks and helicopters ok to fly too though a bit awkward to aim.

It's either this guy or the barrel, probbaly both

 The graphics for Bad Company were ok, they have a real rough gritty console look to them which could just be my TV but I must remember the was the first battlefield game on that particular generation of consoles but it looked fine, I especially liked the mission where you had crashed your chopper and woke up alone and had to sneak around in the dank moonlight to try and find your squadmates. The sun and sunset effects were good as well and of course the environment destruction although something we take for granted now it was certainly the thing back in this game it was just an adequately detailed military shooter for the time. I enjoyed the music which had a upbeat feel to it rather than serious all the damn time like the other single player BF games, the voice acting was great with the playful banter and all the arguing and the gunshots and explosions were all up to scratch.

Hooray for Destructive environments! now they have nowhere to hide.

 I’ll admit I had fun playing the game though in the end I was glad to get it over with, it was a nice little story that is a demonstration that not every game has to be so linear in its level design or objectives or battle sequence and it doesn’t always have to be so damn serious too. It’s good when a game can laugh at itself just like you do. This was probably one of the best console shooters I have played though that’s not saying much cause I haven’t played many, ah well. As a side note I wasn’t able to experience the multiplayer as the game came out in 2008 so I wasn’t really able to find anyone to play with, would have been fun but meh I had really missed the time that this game was active with players, and I think that was the time I had stopped playing Battlefield 2 shortly after discovering WoW, when the dark ages started hah not really though it wasn’t until Bad Company 2 that I got onto the Battlefield again.

JD

Oh no you don't!

7/10

Things I liked:

Powerful and invigorating weapons

Easy to play despite using controller

Great Story and character banter

Weapon collecting and gold chest hunting are good side activities

Things I didn’t like:

Game is only on Console

Fairly short, not much replay ability apart from multiplayer

Characters are funny but can get annoying.

I think this is a good introduction to the game :D Thanks to TheRussionBadger for this compilation, and thanks DasUberpoop for his excellent Campaign gameplay.

Truckasaurus Rex here I come!

My Usual Spiel: Screencheat, a novel idea perfectly executed.

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

The team from LoadingReadyRun discover Screencheat

And everyone died but it was fun

My Usual Spiel: Starcraft II, Legacy of the Void: Finally some closure

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 Oblivion prologue 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 Nerazim  were 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


Legacy of the Void Cinematic Trailer

….Skippy?