Hi all, I have recently made a few changes to my Brick Mansion,
specifically I have now walled off the “relaxation zone” which included the
pool, the sauna and the spa. I had been thinking of doing this for awhile and
of course open plan is nice but no-one wants the smell of chlorine when having
dinner.
The wall was brick for the border obviously though this time the doorways
and doors themselves were made from Acacia wood as I had not used this type of
wood at all in the building of the house (as it wasn’t in the game yet for most
of the construction) Most of the wall itself featured large windows of which I
set stained glass in a chequered rainbow configuration that looks ok but I may
change in the future. Unfortunately I have just noticed that Acacia doors are actually the most
flimsy letting a lot of air through and are almost not like a door at all, but
anyway the area was mostly blocked off so it was fine.
The new wall sorrounding the relaxation zone.
View from the 'Relaxation zone'
Another thing I did was widen the steps leading down to the
basement to three blocks instead of two as the biggest staircase down is on the
other side from the relaxation zone though it would actually have less people
going down it.
The widened staircase going down to the lower level, still no barrier though
I still didn’t construct a barrier as it would have covered too
much of the jungle garden below, so people will just have to be careful hah
though maybe I will make one in the future I don’t know. I also re-did the
planter in the middle to make it a bit smaller and I also had to take out the
tree.
The new wall view from the dining area
I re-did the stonework for the Sauna in polished andesite as I think
it looks much better than the cracked stone brick used before.
The newly decorated Sauna
The last thing I
did was make a doorway instead of just an alcove into the resource hall as when
people are having dinner and dancing they probably wouldn’t want to hear what’s
going on in there, all the Minecart noise and such. Though now I also realise there would be all this sound coming from the Forge below so maybe I should think about doing a chimney from the roof of the forge though it would have to go sideways out though that may be an idea.
The new doorway into the resource hall from the dancefloor
From a suggestion by a
friend I also thought about making some sort of diving board for the pool or
some way of getting into the middle area without having to clamber over the
outer lanes but I tried making a way across but it didn’t look too good so I
just thought I’d keep it the way it was.
One last change was that I was looking to possibly add some
windows to the areas which had none. I created some steel barred vents on the
very top of the walls of the forge that let outwards to the wall of the house
letting the heat escape including one which out into the soccer pitch.
Speaking
of which I managed to fit two large iron barred “windows” on opposite all of
the indoor soccer pitch, one of which you can only see the bottom of the
outdoor pool but at least it’s getting some fresh air in and a way for the heat
from, the forge to get out. There wasn’t many other places I make windows where
there weren’t already.
The Library really didn’t have any space, the theatre
and club obviously didn’t need them, I did have a spare wall in the alchemy
room where I put a window into there, I made sure all the lower level windows
were barred for safety reasons especially when some were on the non-walled side
of the house.
Window in the Alchemy Room
The air vents and windows on the non-walled side of the house
So just some small changes until a new patch or a think of
something else.
Release Date: April 14th 2015 Genre: Action-Adventure Publisher: Rockstar North Developer: Rockstar Games Platform: Windows/PS4/PS3/Xbox one & 360 Players: 1 Classification: R (Restricted)
Well you’ve all been waiting for this haven’t you? Yes I’ve
now finally played through GTA5, as you’ve probably guessed what took me so
long is that I was waiting for the PC version to come out, I did actually try
playing the game on PS3 but got frustrated with the stick aiming and decided
just to wait for the PC version. Of course as you all know this did take
roughly two and a half years to become available on Steam on the 14th
of April 2015, but was it worth the wait? Well I guess. It feels weird to say
this but after GTA: San Andreas came out I never felt as much hype for a GTA
game since. Maybe I was so awash in the world of MMORPGs (I was playing WoW
heavily at the time) that It didn’t really matter to me anymore. Nevertheless I
got right into GTA4 when I heard about it and that I could use it on PC (even
though it did use that awful Games for Windows Live thing) and as you’ve
probably read in my review
of it. I was very impressed by the greatly updated new look and ragdoll
physics. I didn’t care at all about the gripes with the car handling and the
limited amount of flight and extreme sports options though this was brought
back mostly in the Ballad
of Gay Tony expansion.
This is one of my favourite shots of the game, in the park with Chop
As I said I was not at all fussed about waiting for the PC
version to come out, I was excited but honestly I had enough games to play and
could endure since I would have to compete with my brother to play it on the
PS3 and I’d have to put up with awful stick aiming. So I waited, and waited for
a damn long time at that but I suppose it was worth it. Before the game came
out it was listed as being just over 65gb! damn talk about blowing your hard
drive space,looks like I wouldn’t be putting
it on my solid state any time soon though this will all change once I get my
new solid state drive of course. I managed to download it at Lanslide Lan as
they had a steam server dedicated to it so I bought and downloaded it in no
time, I decided to purchase it on Steam just to make sure playing multiplayer
went as smooth as possible. I still had my credentials from the Rockstar social
club so was able to log in to that ok and thankfully that was the only thing
that was needed then you just went straight into the game.
Michael and Lester plan a heist
When I heard that GTA5 would be set entirely in Los Santos I
wasn’t too surprised, I didn’t think they were going to do the whole map of San
Andreas again with the three cities, as you know the entire map of the region
was suitably huge, when looking at the GTA5 map in comparison to San Andreas,
GTA 4 and Red Dead Redemption. GTA4 is pretty much the size of the city area,
the San Andreas map takes up about half and the Red Dead Redemption one takes
up just more than half, which as I suspected doesn’t add up to all of them
meshed together like I’ve heard some people saying. Red Dead Redemption was
pretty damn big but was mostly desert and rock, which is true enough being set
in the early 19th century. The “Island” of Los Santos is similar as
the majority of the landscape is wilderness with just under a third being the
Los Santos City itself and there’s a whole host of people and activities out
there, some random some not and I feel even though I’ve finished the game I
haven’t explored out there to the fullest degree.
A Map size comparison with that of GTA4, San Andreas and Red Dead Redemption
Indeed I enjoyed GTA4 as a simple gritty realistic
experience with semi-believable characters though GTA5 was a very different
story. The first images I saw of GTA5 were pretty damn impressive, the
picturesque views and awesome graphics looked great but I wasn’t too pleased by
the introduction of the three-protagonist feature. GTA had always been about
you being a single guy, yes guy I actually would have preferred a female
protagonist rather than 3 guys or maybe just one playable female character to
make things interesting at least. I always liked the fact that most of the time
you had come to a new city and were relatively unknown and had to work your way
up but with the descriptions and the history of the three new protagonists only
Franklin seems to fit this which I believe was the intent, Michael was the
retired criminal who has beat the game, Trevor is the crazy player who just
likes killing and carnage and Franklin is the similar protagonist to the
previous games. Don’t get me wrong I liked Niko and I liked CJ and I I liked Tommy Vercetti, but for
some weird reason I think I liked GTA 3’s Claude the best cause he was the
most unknown and the most small time and also that he didn’t talk, I don’t mind
silent protagonists, I was very much a fan of Gordon Freeman and
found it funny when lots of people are talking to you but you say nothing which
is exactly what happens with the GTA Online Protagonist.
In my view the GTA5 Protagonists had too much going on and talked way too much
but then again I guess people like action and drama and few hold my view as
Claude being one of their favourite protagonists.
Now that's quite a view
GTA tells the story of the three protagonists Michael
De Santa, Franklin Clinton and Trevor
Philips with Michael and Trevor being playable in the intro and Franklin
being the first played in the main game, the introduction sequence shows some
history of Micheal and Trevor as you actually play out the intro as you get to
grips with the controls and are introduced to swapping characters while they
attempt to rob a bank some place called North Yankton which is an actual town
called just “Yankton” in South Dakota. In short the heist doesn’t go so well
and then we are treated to GTA 5’s opening sequence.
Part of the Prologue set in North Yankton, I showcase the screen flashing when an enemy is killed and first person shooting and driving.
After starting story mode
and watching GTA5’s impressive intro you are then treated to a cutscene of Michael having a
conversation with his psychologist which tells us a bit of background for him
and then we switch to Franklin
who is walking with his friend Lamar
before they both steal some high end cars from the back of a house then have a
high speed race then are chased by the cops then drive them back to the Premium Deluxe Motorsport business of the
shady Simeon Yetarian then after that we finally drive
with Lamar back to Franklin’s Aunt’s house where he lives. Starting with
Franklin would seem the right choice though the other problem was I had
pre-ordered the game so it gave Franklin (and Franklin only) $500,000 to start
off with, which doesn’t really make sense and I couldn’t even distribute the
money in between the characters. Oh well not that it mattered too much, I was
soon doing more missions that involved more money. The missions with Franklin
start out fairly low key and introduce you to the game, Franklin is from eastern
Los Santos and is part of the “The
Families” which I did look up and it appears that The Grove Street Families
from San Andreas were actually a “set” of this gang not the whole gang as it
was implied or so I thought. I also read that apparently there was something
said by Lamar in the game that the Grove street OG’s eventually got out of the
Gang bangin lifestyle and moved on with their lives possibly to be rich CEO’s
lol which given the events of San Andreas made sense.
Playing a few missions with Franklin, Lamar and Chop were pretty fun to start with,
the control scheme of things is basically the same as before so I had no
problem with driving moving and shooting,you are soon introduced to Michael via Franklin sneaking into his house
and trying to repossess his son’s car. I must admit I was looking forward to
playing as Michael as no GTA character had ever really had a wife and children
in the game before and boy were they dysfunctional hah. Michael is by far the
most well off having a mansion in the Vinewood Hills but apparently he is in
debt. Trevor’s introduction to the game was one of the most horrifying scenes
I’ve seen in a GTA game basically he is seen screwing a woman from behind then
getting angry and stomping a man to death, I won’t go into detail who it was
but man was it confronting and funny to think that young kids may be playing
the game and watching this.
Trevor's first appearance was quite violent indeed.
I have to admit I didn’t feel right swapping
between characters just plonking yourself down in the shoes of one, plus it
made things even more difficult with the fact that you had to remember who had
what weapons though it only really bought weapons with Franklin cause he did
most of the assassinations, you didn’t need to bother though cause most of the
time you were given what you needed for the mission you were doing. The other
thing was, as fun as doing heists and missions were, switching between the
three characters at once just didn’t feel right, one minute I’m flying the
chopper then the next I’m inside the building, though It works I guess, I just
much prefer the way it’s done online with each person doing a certain job. Also
each character has their own special ability. Franklin has the ability to slow
down time when driving to make quick manoeuvres, Trevor’s ability is basically
Invulnerability so useless to me haha and Michaels is the best in my book as
it’s basically bullet time a la Max Payne and makes those headshots much
easier.
The game's three protagonists along with Lester Crest planning a heist, Michael was in his underwear from a previous mission but I just decided to leave him in it.
Other changes to the game are evident as the Weapon Wheel
is now used to select your weapons a la Red Dead Redemption and Max Payne 3,
and there is now much a larger weapon pool, made even larger by the addition of
DLC weapons and boy was there a lot by the time I got to the game. Apparently
the card handling had also been fixed though as I said I had no problem with
the previous games car handling, maybe they just suited my style though it
seems they were now a bit lighter and twitchier whereas the GTA4 physics were a
bit heavier.
Franklin using his special ability hence the green tinge, from what I can remember Franklin was green tingle, Michael was blue and Trevor was red.
Probably the most notable change was the first
person mode which was a (pardon the pun) first for a GTA game, I initially
felt like I should play the game through like this as it was a whole new way of
playing, but after a bit of playing around including running and punching
people across the footpath, having a fistfight, having a gunfight, standing on
top of trucks and getting whacked in the head then ragdolling off the truck
onto the ground all while in first person felt a bit nauseating. I will note
here that you can actually turn first person ragdoll off and I did a small few
missions in this mode where it worked rather well this was one point where I
was running from the cops and climbing over walls and fences to escape then
hiding behind a wall, another time where I was hiding from the cops while
inside a car and I could see some cops around still looking as I sat inside.
Using first person mode in both of these situations made the game feel more
tense and realistic as it’s more personal though part of this feeling is the
fact that you can’t see around corners etc and this does make things harder as
you don’t generally have the “third person cheat vision” to see around walls
and when in cover.
First person view from inside the car
Another reason I couldn’t play the game in the third person
is though when driving there is now detailed interiors, similar to Test Drive
Unlimited 2 and most driving games now I still want to see my damn car lol,
driving with the mouse and keyboard makes this even better as it’s easy to
place the camera all the way around when driving to get some different angles.
Oh yehh, wiiiiiiiide angle shots, the mouse swooparound helps a lot when being attacked from all sides especially in large vehicles.
The game’s controls as I’ve said before are relatively the
same though this time I have utilized my Logitech PS3 style controller to the
fullest, the game allows for seamless use of keyboard and gamepad even changes
the on-screen button prompts with you so much as move the stick of the
controller which is a great help when changing all of a sudden to gamepad
control before a street race starts or when you’re flying though no matter how
I tried I still couldn’t stop spinning the tires when taking off though the
controller made it much easier to turn and brake more fluently rather than the
full on or off that you get with the keyboard. I only use the controller when
flying and in races most of time, the first time I flew a plane in the game I
had no idea what I was doing as there were no planes in GTA4 but now I even use
the controller for helicopters as it just works so much better, I sometimes
using it when driving but not when I’m going to be constantly getting in or out
of a car of I’m going to need to at a certain point.
Got the gamepad contols for this jet down pat now.
On the ground I mainly
used the keyboard and mouse due to the ease of the mouse aiming but even then I
still went for headshots as there is this great new feature that when you kill
a person the screen flashes blue or something showing that they are now dead,
this was awesome for letting me know that I got a head shot. Annoyinglyif you missed their head they would flail
around then fall over and appear dead
then they just got back up again and I don’t know how many times I can’t
remember whether I had killed an enemy and was sitting there waiting for them
to get up before shooting a few more bullets into them. As with Niko in GTA4
you’re restricted for the most part by human physics and endurance you have to
time your sprints so you don’t run out of stamina and also I noticed when doing
things like running and pivoting it’s much more realistic as you can’t change
direction rapidly you have to actually twist around as you would in real life.
The 'Repossession' mission with Franklin and Lamar, I try to do half the mission in third person and the rest in first person, this also shows the gun combat dynamics.
I will add in here that I was using a trainer throughout the
game, the Script Hook V
+ Native Trainer to be precise as this was the most similar to the Simple
trainer for GTA4 though with less options though I’m sure more will be added,
there’s also the usuals there though inc invincibility, teleporting, never
wanted, fast running, vehicle spawning etc and also a model changer which is
quite hilarious as it has animals available such as monkeys and even cows
though some obviously can’t drive cars and you unfortunately you cannot do
missions with non-humanoid models. The vehicle spawner is great as always as I
always like to try out unique vehicles in ridiculous places like driving a golf
cart through the backwoods and being able to spawn anything at any time is a
huge time saver. And yes I did use invincibility but not the infinite special
ability and I also I tried to use the thing minimally for cheating but that
damn health and stamina interface is so goddamn minimalistic and tiny that it’s
hard to notice how fast it goes down plus if you’ve seen the mod you would
know how awesome it is. On other thing I’ll add is that I no longer needed to
use the “progress time forward” or back option as now if you attempt to start a
mission that requires it to be night time it progresses time forward so it’s
correct, so thank god for that no more goddamn freakin “come back between this
time and that time” message.
Well that didn't exactly work out the way I planned
A few other GTA games included golf courses but you could never truly play golf or just use a driving range this time it's it's fully fledged golf with a course and golf carts.
Probably the biggest new feature of missions is the heists
which form a lot of the main missions of the game, this basically sees you
planning a heist with Michael’s friend and former affiliate from his old life Lester Crest who organises
and sets them up. Lester plans the heist and at the meeting offers two ways of
doing things which are usually some as aspect of “quiet” or “loud” approach,
you also have to choose what crew you are going to take on the heist and you
can see their skill and what percentage of cut they want, the more skilled they
are the more of a cut they will take though the lesser skilled crew members
will gain more skill with each heist they do. With the infamous first jewelery
store heist I made the mistake of taking some lesser skill individuals and paid
for it, I tried this mission more recently doing everything right and it worked
well, I’m going to try it again at some point doing the bustin-in loud option
with all of the worst crew I can and see what happens. These heists which you
do a few of throughout the story game form a basis for GTA Online which
is actually shipped as a different game altogether where basically most of the
time you are doing heists or setups for heists but I’ll get into that another
time.
The Jewelery store heist planning board
The world of GTA5 is incredibly varied and full of life as
the three characters you interact with everyone including friends and family
members even in free roam mode, for example as Michael I once got up saw my
wife and son on the breakfast table then when I walked out of the house I saw
my daughter drive past out the gate quite fast actually almost running me over.
It feels really weird to see people you know just walking around, it certainly
wasn’t like that in GTA4 where seeing someone when not on a mission was
incredibly formalized. People around the game world are more reactive as well,
the screams gasps and reactions to what you do are slightly more realistic now.
Once of the more prominent things I noticed is that people are now doing more
things, their lying on the beach, their doing gardening, their driving in and
out of their driveways, their running and cycling and working out and doing
everything that you see when you walk around (and not see as well in some
parts) their even diddling on their phones and taking selfies! Dang lol this is
getting way too real. The internet makes a return in the game which is now
accessible via your phone to make things a bit easier and yes it’s never been
funnier, the entire “GTA internet” is a satirical haven with everything from
facebook “aka Lifeinvader” to the stock market to real estate websites. The
internet also has lots more functionality this time around with forward and
back buttons and more interactivity for each website. The flight school made a
return and you can also use the ammunition gun range though there was no car,
bike or boat school that I could see.
Angry Trevor tries to enjoy the beach but is still plagued by mobile phones.
One of the biggest things that fans were looking forward to
with GTA5 was the updated graphics though after the major update to HD and the
introduction of ragdoll with GTA4 I wasn’t really sure how much better they
could do as modern games are just getting better and it’s hard to expect
anything more. Case in point, the graphics were pretty damn phenomenal as with
the PC and Console next gen releases they received more than a tweaking. I’ve
got my system set for speed rather then graphics but it still looked pretty
damn great, there’s so much detail in there it’s crazy, grass, weeds, roads in
disrepair, papers blowing past, random trash cans and traffic cones all the
little things add up. The scenery and HD weather elements such as fog and
sunset are greatare the best they have
ever been as most of my screenshots were out in the country on dirt roads and
forests where you could really appreciate the sights though I must admit the
city at night looked amazing especially during the mission Did Somebody Say Yoga? which is one of my
favourite missions in the game.
Another great shot of the graphics, you can see the details everywhere
The character models have never looked more realistic
though still aren’t quite up to the photorealistic quality though this is also
due to my machine limits though the 4K resolution modding is
already happening as far as I know.As
for the technicalities of my machine I recently upgraded my monitors part way
through playing so I went from 1680x1050 resolution to finally being at least
1980x1080 also I had a bit of a play around with the colour settings, I was
unimpressed with the gaming setting due the dark parts coming up much lighter
though I suppose it would help with visibility but I didn’t like the look, I
also tried the “scenery” mode but it made the game just saturated with colour
so I just decided to do the normal view which worked fine. There’s not much
more I can say but the characters, the vehicles, the scenery, the water the
sunsets all looked amazing and absolutely up to standard.
Ahh the end of a hard day's killing, on to a long night's killing.
The soundtrack in GTA5 is quite huge but the best feature in
my book is the addition of an original
score which was mainly used during missions but was played throughout both
the singleplayer and multiplayer modes. Most of the time I actually didn’t turn
on the radio much as I was just enjoying the soundtrack and tense music that
played during the missions and suited them perfectly I might add. Regarding the
Radio stations
there is now a huge amount, roughly 17 stations were available in the original
release now an extra one has been added making it 18 and damn it is a lot of
music with some new and returning celebrity DJ’s including Kenny Loggins, Pam
Grier and Cara Delvinge. Though I didn’t exactly spend much time listening to
the radio the in game soundtrack suited just fine or maybe just what the
characters had on at the time, I did at one point load some MP3’s on and listen
to the self radio but though there really wasn’t much point as you have to copy
a whole bunch of MP3’s into a folder to be able to listen instead of linking to
your music folder and also there was more than enough music on the many radio
stations not to mention the soundtrack. I never have that much to say about the
sound effects and general speech though it’s top notch, I’m not exactly a big
audiophile when it comes to sound, so everything sounded fine to me.
Push it to the limit! Crash the gaaaaaaates!
So in conclusion the story between Franklin, Michael and
Trevor can be finalised in several different ways of which I have yet to try
but even so it finished so quickly, I was always waiting for some big thing to
happen but after several big things that I thought weren’t the big thing the
game just ended though I should have known from the last game that it ends with
a “choice” similar to GTA4 but I don’t know I’m not really that fussed. Having
now played through the story I really don’t much of an urge to go back through
it, this goes back to the whole three unlikable protagonists and the way it
seems to just go from one big shooty action sequence to another. Frankly I’d
rather just go back to being an anonymous hoodlike in GTA3 and this is technically what you are in multiplayer. I’m
not going to talk too much about it yet as I’m going to do a separate review
but technically what I really want is a way to play the singleplayer as a
random hood, but even after you’ve finished the main story this just isn’t
possible the whole game would have to be redone.
Franklin, Michael and Trevor gear up for Heist
I suppose I can say I enjoyed
GTA5 not for the story but for the presentation, there was so much to see and
do and I feel like there’s still a bit more to do and much more to explore and
that’s what I want to do for next playthrough or maybe even next time I boot it
up, after all most of the fun you get out of this game was what you made yourself. My qualms with the game were minimal though and was the only thing keeping
me from aperfect score.
JD
8/10
Things I liked:
Improved on just about everything from previous GTA
Immaculate presentation
Heists and planning them are great fun
First person view is a great addition
Seamless keyboard to gamepad transition
No more time of day requirements for missions
Things I didn’t like:
Unlikable characters, no female protagonist
Switching between characters during a mission
Didn’t enjoy story too well, too spontaneous and action
orientated
The Grand Theft Auto V: PlayStation 4, Xbox One & PC Announcement Trailer
Release Date: June 1995 Genre: First Person Shooter Publisher: Lucasarts Developer: Lucasarts Platform: DOS/Windows/Playstation Network Players: 1 Classification: ESRB: Teen (T)
Awhile ago my friend Brok discovered the site www.gog.com Good old Games which sells many
classic games in an updated DRM-free format that can run on modern
systems. His main objective was to gain a working version of the X-Wing
and TIE Fighter collectors editions and we found
there was not only those but a whole host of classic
Star Wars games of which we purchased quite a few in bulk during the sale
inc X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and the
entire Jedi
Knight series. For those of you who don’t know, Star Wars Dark
Forces is the first games of the Jedi Knight series of games which also
include Dark Forces II, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy which you’ll know from a
previous review.
Once I had purchased them from GOG.com I decided to play them in order starting
with Dark Forces.
Hmm this hallway looks familiar
Star Wars Dark forces was released in 1995 the time where
the “3D” First person shooter was king and that king was for the most part the
king was the Doom
series, indeed being very similar to Doom the game was often compared to Doom
but reviewers always indicated that the game had many features that improved
upon its competitors. Dark Forces featured the ability to look up and down,
duck and jump and featured an additional resource battery powerto run various
equipment powerups such as the headlamp and night vision goggles. To make these
changes the developers had to create a whole new game engine simply titled Jedi, this allowed
them to create multi-levelled maps which unlike Doom had rooms directly above
or below each other that you could walk around, moving conveyor belts and some
objects that were fully 3D such as smaller starships (though these were quite
obvious when you saw them). It also had a much more engaging and involved
storyline then Doom, adding various puzzles and strategy to the game as well as
finding secrets and requiring keycards to advance. Atmospheric effects such as
fog and haze and animated textures and shading were also added to great effect.
You can't quite see it but there is red haze
Installing GoG games are fairly easy as the package is just
downloaded from the main site then extracted with a built in installer. This is
just as well as it uses Dosbox to run and I’ve messed around with that thing
before but never got it to work, but fortunately this did and I was able to
start playing. There has been many comparisons to GoG and Steam though there’s
one major difference that I found was summed up well by Jerry
Holkins (Tycho) of Penny Arcade,
he says that Steam is more like a jukebox that (supposedly) holds or your games
but if it goes offline or has login issues then you can’t play them, whereas
GoG is a vending machine that gives you full access to the product after you
pay for it. I’m not exactly sure which one I like more, I do like letting steam
take control of everything (installation/updates etc) and it’s great when
you’re trying to make sure you have the same game version as other people
especially with older games like Unreal Tournament 2004, Origin also helped
with Battlefield 1942 (as well as Warcraft 3) as I can remember a fair few
times where a group of us had problems getting the correct version in order to
play together.
Kyle ship The Moldy Crow currently piloted by Jan
Though the control setup menu the game provided was easy to
use, I found that I just couldn’t quite get the setup I liked, I could use the
mouse but it just didn’t feel right as the controls were set up in sections and
you didn’t have an options to change the alt fire to a mouse button (though I
didn’t use this very much). This was probably due to the fact that I had been
the Doom series with ZDoom which if you
didn’t know allows you to play any of the original Doom series with much more
features including much better graphics, and the ability to jump and use the
mouse to look free including up and down. So being used to this of course it
was kind of hard to play a whole game stuck in the same view, you did actually
have the ability to look up and down though this was used with keys and wasn’t the same as the free mouselook we’re
used to today. I did play a few levels in this mode but due to the difficulty
and annoyance of not having free look I decided to try to find a similar type
of mod to ZDoom I came across DarkXL
which is basically exactly what I was looking for and it worked very well as it
gave the game much sharper graphics and better controls.
A shot-in-shot of the DarkXL and the original in the top right
Though I soon found that although it worked well for the
first few levels there began to be many bugs inc no sound and crashing on
certain levels, impossible puzzles and blocked doors, missing cinematics and
the inability to use several late-game weapons, I found this out much too late
as it was only on the last few levels that I realised that I should have been
able to pick up certain weapons and enemies should have dropped certain weapons
though this hadn’t affected me as I did just fine with that I had. I did
eventually get through the game (and use the weapons for a short time) but only
through using various cheats though it was a lesser experience as a lot was
missing from the later parts of the game, some of which I had to go back to the
Dosbox version to see. I recently found that on the XL Engine site itself the game was actually listed
as being in its Alpha stage and 98% towards beta (if I had only waited a bit
longer XD) so basically I might go back to it again, either modded or unmodded,
but I experienced enough for this review nonetheless.
Pew pew! Forcing entry into the imperial detention centre to find Crix Madine
So with that out of the way on to the story. You play as Kyle Katarn who you may
already know from the other games in the Jedi Knight series, the developers had
actually wanted to use Luke Skywalker but due to gameplay and story constraints
they created Kyle Katarn as a completely new character. His brief history of
having previously defected from the Empire after he found they were responsible
for killing his parents (with the help of Jan Ors) and
was now working as a mercenary for the Rebel Alliance. The main story involves
Kyle investigating the Dark
Troopers which had been created by Imperial General Rom Mohc
about the massive starship the Arc Hammer,
so you basically go from level to level gathering intelligence with some
rescues and escapes along the way. Of all the planets visited during the game I
only recognised Nar Shaddaa and Coruscant
with the restincluding Danuta, Anoat, Fest, Cal-Seti and
many others which I didn’t recognise. I found the story pretty damn engaging as
it kept me going through all of the issues faced with the mod and it was great
to hear about all the new star wars lore and the origin of the Jedi Knight
series which I hadn’t known since playing Jedi Academy heaps of times.
Our hero Kyle Katarn, looking a bit older then he does in Jedi Academy
General Mohc, Darth Vader and the Republic Informant Crix Madine
As I mentioned playing the game with the DarkXL mod made it
much better (at the start at least) I could move freely with the WASD keys I
could look freely with the mouse, I could crouch and jump and touch buttons all
good, the graphics were much, much better as you could run the game with your
native desktop resolution. Basically the game plays the same way as Doom with
you running around shooting enemies and completing objectives though armor is
represented by “shield” power, I spent the majority of the time not using
cheats as compared to Doom as I found the difficulty not too bad. The guns in
the game are good and I had fun shooting down piles of Stormtroopers, you start
with a generic laser pistol before almost instantly getting hold of the
Stormtroooper laser rifle which basically becomes your mainstay weapon
throughout the whole game, the thing is that good, the ammo is plentiful (most
imperial soldiers drop rounds) and it shoots damn fast. My other weapon of
choice was the imperial repeater gun, this thing has even more pewpew and
shoots very fast but has weaker shots and takes power cells which are harder to
find, and my last weapon of choice was thermal detonators which are plentiful
on certain levels, when thrown these detonate on impact (unless using secondary
fire) and you are able to throw a ridiculous amount in a short period of time
(like 3 a second!) so taking down bosses with these was no problem at all.
Me pew-pew-pewing with the Stormtrooper laser rifle on Tak base, an early mission
Other weapons included the Jet fusion cutter which was a powerful but slow
firing laser bolt gun, the I.M mines which are basically claymores, the Mortar
gun which speaks for itself, the Stouker concussion rifle which is a long range
AOE blast that tore apart most standard enemies and the Assault Cannon which is
used by Dark Troopers and shoots both Plasma and rockets. The last three I
unfortunately didn’t use very much due to them not beingimplemented in the mod yet and me having to
add them in using cheats.
Fighting General Mohc with the Assault Cannon
I mostly plowed through the levels as I enjoy the fast pace
of these style of games but I did notice the subtle differences from the Doom and
Jedi engines that I mentioned before, specifically things like
"room-over-room" multi-levelled stages which had much more lift and
platforms then Doom and made traversing some levels very confusing when you had
rooms right on top of each other, there was also many instances which required
you to solve puzzles which included changing switches in a sequence to open
doors and moving entire ships to change from one section to the other. The game
had multiple objectives which were part of the storyline so it gave the game
much more depth than just randomly killing (and occasionally obtaining
keycards) to get to the end of the level. One thing I didn’t like was that you
couldn’t save anywhere you wanted like in Doom, you had respawn points but if
the game crashed for example you could load a save you just had to start all
over again which was a bit annoying.
As some places were multi-levelled, the map was had the ability to change which level you were looking at though it was still tricky. You also had the ability to view your weapons, inventory and objectives which was a great help.
I didn’t cheat throughout most of the game
(the actual invincibility cheat could not be used with the DarkXL mod) but I topped
myself up with health and ammo at times towards the end. In regards to pickups
there was you basic health and shield pickups as well as your laser ammo, power
cells for those weapons that took them were a bit more sparse the same with
mortar shells and rockets, most of the time you were overloaded with the ammo
that the enemies in the level dropped. Then there was the other items that used
battery pickups such as your headlamp, infra-red goggles and the air mask, the
latter of which I could not work out which button it was to use it lol as there
was also extra lives and restart points for when you died. Though by far my
favourite was the weapons supercharge which triples your rate of fire for a
short period of time, heaps of fun to use and together with the rest of the
pickups made the whole experience more fun and interactive.
Me fighting Dark Troopers and other enemies using a variety of weapons about the Executor, this also shows me using the weapons supercharge and smuggling myself on the Arc Hammer
As I mentioned before the graphics for the original game
were (understandably) quite poor as they only went up to 640x480 but the DarkXL
mod you could have your desktop resolution which made it great looking and much
sharper, whether you had the mod or not the locations still looked great, there
was plenty of areas that I recognised from the movies such as the white interiors
of some ships from that first scene in episode 4 and everything had that
distinct Star Wars flare. The new engine was able to create gameplay and
graphical elements such as fully 3D objects, atmospheric effects such as fog
and haze, animated textures and shading which was evident in the levels as
there were lots of things moving around such as bridges moving and ships flying
around outside and many kinds of moving 3D objects. The textures do lack that
flair that Doom had with the all the demonic imagery and gore but as this was a
Star Wars game the developers had to stick to the content and the game being as
old as it was you couldn’t do too much with just textures. The game’s retro sounding
star wars score soundtrack really stood out to me and it was great when you
recognised a tune and really added to the atmosphere and the situational music
helped too, the sound effects were equally great, all in stereo as well.
Some levels inc this ice level on Anteevy which features flowing water and moving assembly lines
Although my experience with Dark forces wasn’t fully functional
I suppose you say, I enjoyed it anyway and much more so with the Dark XL mod
and when the mod is fully finished I dare say I’ll play it again. It was great
to see the beginning of the Jedi Knight series one of which I am going to
continue playing to see out the series. As I’ve said before Star Wars Dark
Forces is not just a Doom clone, it has a whole new engine and many elements
that make it different if not better and I will maintain that stance throughout
the years to come. It’s said that almost every gamer has played an ID Software
shooter in some form but this is a game every Star Wars fan of all types should
play.
JD
Score: 8/10
Things I liked:
Overall storyline and missions designed very well.
Level design very dynamic, multi-level system new for the time
Fun and effective weapons and powerups
Things I didn’t like
Control system obviously dated and not able to be configured enough.
No save-anywhere feature, respawn system annoying when have to start again from game crash
Level textures somewhat dull due to nature of Star Wars Universe
I fist a Kell Dragon and then shoot up Jabba's ship
Release Date: June 27th 2014 Genre: Tactical Shooter, Stealth Publisher: Rebellion, 505 Games Developer: Rebellion, 505 Games Platform:Windows, Playstation 3 & 4, Xbox 360 & One Players: 1 and Multiplayer Classification: PEGI 18
I had only heard of the name Sniper Elite before seeing my
housemate playing Sniper Elite 3 with his friend. I had always liked shooter
games that had a “class” system i.e. the Battlefield style
soldier/sniper/engineer/medic etc and shunned any shooter that had any type of specialization which were most often based on the stealth/sniping side of
combat but from watching them playing Sniper Elite 3, it actually looked pretty
fun. I had only barely known about the Sniper Elite series and wasn’t familiar
with it, but after some quick research I found that he original Sniper
Elite came out in 2005 starring the same protagonist as the one in this
current game. The original Sniper Elite saw the plight of Karl Fairburne, an
American OSS secret agent disguised as a German Sniper inserted into the Battle
of Berlin in 1945 at the end of World War II with the objective of
obtaining German Nuclear Technology before the Soviet Union can get their hands
on it. The second in the series Sniper
Elite V2 is more of a 1.5 the atrue
sequel though having a slightly different story it was mainly the graphical
upgrade and improved sniper mechanics which now included the “kill-cam” which
follows the bullet as we see in Sniper Elite 3.
The loud sounding icon (top middle) means that it's safe to shoot your rifle while the sound is being masked, very useful.
When I saw my
housemate and his friend playing Co-op story mode it looked awesome, so the
next time it was on Steam sale for about $20 I wasted no time in purchasing it.
As you have probably heard this time around instead of the bombed out and
broken city Berlin it was the harsh western desert in between the Mediterranean
and the Sahara, you again play as OSS Agent and Sniper Karl Fairburne sent to Tobruk,
Libya to assist the allied forces, it then leads him on a quest through
several different locations in the desert including rocky desert passes, oasis,
old castle ruins and airfields which give a sort of India Jones feel. I won’t
reveal the full extent of the story but basically after losing Tobruk you remove
yourself from the frontline and go covert to investigate the location of
General Franz Vahlen (a protege of Hitler sent to oversee the campaign in North
Africa) and the whereabouts of a British informant that has infiltrated
Vahlen's staff who has gone dark. It’s a great story that is tense from the
start and gets you wondering what will happen next or more important what your
objectives are going to be) as they are not all listed at the start so you
never know how long things are going to go on until something else happens most
probably a tank bursting out of the wall which result in much sighing and “here
we go again” late in the game, I swear sometimes I just wanted to finish the
damn level but it was all in good fun just wondering what other shit was going
to go down.
Cinematic's between levels were done with storyboard art.
Interestingly
enough this time when I started up the story mode I didn’t play on easy, just
the recommended level, I’m going to try this from now on, playing the game in
normal to see how I go and I’ve got to say I went pretty well, I chose the
default ‘Marksman’ setting which had simplified bullet ballistics and fairly
unforgiving enemies. Right away the game was pretty damn fun, the first level
gets you to grips with the sniping straight away as you get your first taste of
the slow motion bullet time, with the bullet assist on you basically aim then
click E to hold your breath and you zoom in more and a little red diamond
appears to tell you where your bullet will actually land due to bullet drops,
this is extremely useful and you watch as your bullet tears in slow motion
right through the skull of the German artillery spotter then another goes
through the gasoline tank of an artillery truck blowing them sky high the
former being done in x-ray to see just where you hit. Most of the time you are
being very stealthy throughout the missions, so the choice of equipment was
paramount, you are able to upgrade your weapons and other accessories such as
grenades, tripmines and your binoculars. My usual loadout included the “Welrod”
silenced pistol, this thing was invaluable being the only silenced weapon in
the game, the amount of times I headshot enemies from close range with this
thing to keep quiet was huge, Basically if I couldn’t use my rifle I either
snuck up and melee stealth killed them or used the welrod if they were too far
away. I had a choice of semi-automatic machine guns which didn’t really matter
except in rare circumstances where I was out of Welrod ammo or just needed to
gun someone down at close range so most of the time I just took the best
available, the same with the rifles though my favourite was the “Gewehr 43” a
German rifle which was the weakest but had the least recoil and was better than
the standard M1 Garand. I didn’t really care what else I took along but made
sure I had plenty of grenades and medpacks.
My basic playstyle
was being very stealthy and cautious and as I soon found going in “loud” with
guns blazing did not work well at all, my friend and I once tried doing a
single player mission together and quickly found that unless you meticulously
worked together timing your movements and shots it was just too hard to keep
things running smoothly. When starting missions you receive your initial
objectives and are able to change your loadout in which you have multiple slots,
which helps when you have multiple weapon setups for different situations. When
I started I usually scanned the area with my binoculars looking for enemies,
vehicles, objects etc anything that I could spot before moving out. Spotting
enemies with your binoculars has distinct advantages like being able to see the
spotted enemy through obstacles and hover over them to see their rank and
alertness as officers are more cautious and can spot you quicker and from
further away. One of the best things you could find was something that made
noise but didn’t alert nearby enemies, for example on one of the first levels
“Gaberoun” you start behind a guard you is trying to fix a faulty generator,
you come across these at certain times and by sabotaging them they make periodical
banging and popping sounds which can mask your shots. So finding one of these
is great as all you need to do is time your shots for when the machine is
making noise and you are able to fire your rifle without alerting anyone unless
of course they find a body though you can move the bodies if needed. There are
various types of noise-making things that you find on the mission and they are
a great help because firing your rifle too much in the one spot will lead to
enemies coming to investigate.
Spotting and tagging with binoculars is very helpful in both game modes, in singleplayer you can see their stats and alert state.
Most of the time I
made it through ok, I used a combination of my rife and silenced pistol and
often just sneaked past enemies to get through though in the later missions I
saved a LOT, often before doing anything particularly risky and this helped
immensely with trial and error. Some of the mission objectives are pretty
spectacular, you have to blow up a lot of things and there a few tricks that
make it very satisfying. Most of the main mission objectives require you to
gather intel or assassinate a particular enemy, sometimes you get to find and
release prisoners which is pretty cool, though in most of the later missions
you can bet your bottom dollarthat a
tank or armored vehicle of some kind is going to come crashing through a wall
and start patrolling around. There are several ways to deal with tanks, you can
shoot through a part of their armour to get to the fuel tank though this takes
a few shots which armour piercing bullets help with, I either used this tactic
or laid some mines and dynamite in its path then blew them up with a sniper
shot both of which are immensely satisfying as trying to tank down a tank that
can blow you up in a second is pretty damn scary but thrilling. When finishing
a mission your points are tallied and you actually level up as your profile is
tied to the multiplayer mode as well though you obviously gain a lot more
points for killing players and winning matches then playing singleplayer, there
is also many collectibles inc war diaries and collectible cards other things to
find like sniper nests and long shots oh and lots and lots of achievements as
usual. I only played through the singleplayer on marksman but that will be all
as that’s enough I think for now after that it was on to the multiplayer mode.
Playing hide with the tank
Multiplayer is
pretty much level with the singleplayer by my view, you may not have the slow
motion bullet time (well the lengthier ones anyway) but you have the terrific
thrill of hunting each other alone or in teams. You can even customise which
model you want to use in the game, after a while I opted for a German elite as
I liked using the Gewehr rifle, so I gave myself all other German weapons too
including the MP40 and Luger pistol, I’ve also got some mines and grenades but
don’t use them as much as I should. When I started playing Sniper Elite
multiplayer I wasn’t sure what to expect although I had seen it being played
before, I wondered whether it was going to be lots of hiding and waiting around
to spot someone, or was it going to be people running around all over the place
taking pot shots at each other. Thankfully there’s an even mix,
Having multiple gear loadouts helps a lot
I’ll admit that
it’s at its best when there are lots of players in a server as you have lots
more target to keep you from getting bored. My favourite mode is probably team
deathmatch as there is a lot of comradery when playing with teammates, to win
you need to either reach the target score of “what is usually” 1500 or have the
highest score when the time runs out. Other game modes included deathmatch
which wasn’t so good because you lost the “team player” aspect of it when you
were only out for yourself and I often found myself just running through
building to building playing cat and mouse with machine guns especially on one
particular city level where everyone seemed to be hiding and no-one came out.
Another interesting mode that I thought was pretty cool was the ‘no-cross’ mode
which as you probably guessed keeps the teams on either side of the map and you
are not able to cross, in this mode some existing maps are edited by adding in
either natural chasms or rivers or made barricades to keep you from accessing
the other side. It also introduces new maps one of which being this giant chasm
based on the last singleplayer level with you shooting across cliffs on the
opposite side through concrete bunkers which was really cool.
Me and my friend AllergictoExplosions on Blue, against a team of level 50's and one 47, hmmmm
There aren't many night maps, maybe because it's a lot easier to hide.
My housemate and I
found it best to spot first rather than shoot first as if you spotted an enemy
and then a teammate shot them your team would get much more points than if you
just shot them yourself without spotting. My usual playstyle was to find a good
non-obvious spot to stay for a bit, yes stay for a bit, I’d call it
camping but technically it’s not unless you happen to stay in the one place the
entire round. Technically though camping in a Sniper game is different from
camping in a game such as Battlefield 4 where sitting in the same spot for
longer than even 10 minutes is considered camping but tbh if you’re a Sniper
and you’re using a long range sniper rifle and scope it’s impossible NOT to
camp, that’s what snipers do, they find a good vantage point and sit there,
until someone spots you of course then you have to move. This was one of the
few games where people didn’t really complain about cheating (though still lag)
and everyone was mostly friendly and cooperative, sure makes a difference then
playing a games like CS, playing in teams is great fun with the spotting and
the teamwork it all works really well. There is little to no assists in
multiplayer as you’d expect, there are many parameter when making a server, things
like headshots only, one shot rifle kills, bullet drop, aim assist and even
scope glint.
Short video of a multiplayer round I played, shows how spotting and scoring works basically.
I haven’t much to
say about the graphics just that they were damn awesome, especially the
lighting, during the night it’s very tense and espionage-esqe and during the
afternoon goddamn that sun glare and shadows look amazing. There’s a huge
amount of detail that goes into some of the things you see like for example the
helmets have this realistic weathered beaten look and even the plants and palm
trees look as detailed as they should be. I wasn’t running at full as I was
getting pretty good fps (50-60) most of the time but things still looked
awesome, the x-ray slow motion shots looked amazing and never got old, no
matter where you hit them, the skull, the lungs the testicles it was all a
pleasure to watch, the hard hitting and brutal sound effects accentuated this
with the cracking of the skull or whatever else you had shot in their body. The
sound effects were pretty awesome from the echoey explosion of your gun firing
to the sound of a tank rolling around were all very well done, this was
complimented by an excellent soundtrack of orchestral music coupled with tense
battle and spy tracks and classic WW2 movie music which really added to the
theme. I was glad there was at least some music when you were sneaking around
but there seemed to also be triggered music that gets more intense if you
happen to alert the guards or get into a battle in multiplayer.
The music in these opening scenes was terrific
Overall I enjoyed
(and am enjoying) Sniper Elite 3, I never thought I’d get into a game based
mostly on Sniping but it’s been pretty good and the multiplayer has too, I
swear I could watch those slow motion x-ray testicles get shot through like ten
times before it got old. It’s really the type of game I’d only play through
once though. I must mention that there is an expansion called “Hunt the Grey
Wolf” which is free to purchase as DLC and is basically an extra mission
allowing you to kill Hitler in lots of different ways as I’ve seen in a video
but I’ll leave that up to you if you’d like to purchase as the main game is
enough for me. I can't really think of much I didn't like, apart from a few issues with multiplayer inc how it can be dull at times making you impatient and the small amount of australian servers but these can overlooked.
JD.
Score: 9/10
Things I liked:
Slow
motion x-ray sniper kills of course!
Aim
assistance
Main
focus being on stealth
Tank
battles!
Multiplayer
Sniper comradery
Situational
music, good mood setting
Ability of have multiple loadouts
Things I didn’t like
Multiplayer can get dull making you impatient, especially in deathmatch
Few Australian servers, max amount of player usually 12
