In case you haven’t noticed there has been no new post for a
while, this is because my work circumstances have changed recently and now I
have much less free time for blog writing. I’m unsure at this point whether I
will keep my blog going or not as when I do get spare time I much prefer to be
playing games rather than writing about them which begs the question, do I keep
going and update very sparingly and struggle to remember what a game was like?
Or do I play something then write about it keeping my blog very up to date but
not get time to play games much? or just shut down my blog entirely?
In any case it seems I will not be able to update as much as
a did before, I will still be posting videos on my Youtube
Channel and may update my blog randomly but I’ll have to have a think about
what I will do with it in the future.
In the meantime I’m currently playing GTA Online so much GTA
online, there’s a wealth of things to write about that I won’t even get started
and that’s not even mentioning the Doomsday Heist, I’m
going to need to do a ‘review’ of my April
2016 review as I have done so much more now, or dare I say another Post
Type? I also still playing Player Unknown’s Battleground and we are inching
ever closer to the game’s huuuuuge 1.0
Patch which contains many many things most notably the new desert map
‘Miramar’ and simply the ability to vault
over things. And lastly I have been playing some DOTA 2 with a friend and
as you can probably guess boy am I rusty, not that I was ever decent at it but
man I’ve had some horror rounds, but anyway, all in good practice.
Oh and of course, thanks for reading over the years, I’m
glad to have been able to continue doing this since 2011
Yes I know what you’re thinking, another Doom game review? I
understand your concern as I have been playing a lot of Doom lately, the reason
for this is that I have decided to play through all of the Doom Games first
(Including Doom 3 before
starting on the latest Doom (2016) though I have already tried out the
multiplayer for that one.
Hell is glorious is it not?
I didn’t know there was a Doom 64 until recently, at first
I thought it was just a port of Ultimate Doom or Doom 1
or 2 on their own. I gained a lot more interest in finding out that it was
actually a new game created by Midway Games (who actually created some of the Mortal Kombat games on the SNES) with supervision from id Software, the game runs on a modified version of the Doom engine
which brought a wealth of new features. These features included new sprites,
textures, scrolling skies, limited room-over-room architecture, Scripted events,
Tripwire booby traps, from poison darts to homing fireballs and more advanced
atmospheric colored lighting and effects, such as parallaxing skies, fog, and
lightning. The enemies received a makeover with most looking and acting
different with rendered 3D modelling being used, most of the monsters from the
previous games made a return with the exception of commandos, arch-viles, Spider
MasterMind and revenants
which were cut due to the limited storage capacity of Nintendo 64 cartridges.
The "Terror Core" level which is a good view into Doom 64
There were only two new monsters which were the Nightmare
imp which was a faster version of the regular imp and was also translucent
similar to the Spectre
and the Mother
Demon which is the mysterious final boss of the game meant to replace the Icon of Sin. All weapons from
Doom II are present (albeit redrawn), along with a new demonic weapon made of
demon bones known as the Unmakerwhich
according to the Doom Bible isa
“Demon-tech weapon that hurts pure demons a lot, demon-humans very little and
tech demons some”. There is also sequences which dramatically transform areas,
tripwire booby traps such as darts and homing fireball launchers, and enemies
that appear out of thin air, man I seriously couldn’t work out where the
projectiles were coming from when I first encountered them.
Nightmare Imps are damn fast
Doom 64 has a more horror-based atmosphere than the science
fiction-oriented one seen in earlier games, including darker and more
foreboding color schemes used to increase a sense of fear in the player. Indeed
this version of Doom was much scarier than the previous games, the new soundtrack
was darker and scarier and the satanic imagery was more extensively used.
Traditionally the Doom series has started in technological areas such as space
stations and planetary bases before going into Hell itself but this time
everything seemed scarier, the music was a far cry to the dull
midi-techno-boppey tunes of the first levels of Doom and Doom 2 and looking at
those again they just look comical compared to the horror that is Doom 64.
I had a lot of fun with this level, there's a lot of noise and shooting going on but the echoing sounds effects and ghastly soundtrack are unbelievable. Also I think I missed the last enemy there but meh.
The
story of Doom 64 is nothing new with the forces of Hell trying to invade Earth
once again but this time you don’t fight on Earth just the old Deimos and
Phobos bases and Hell itself but this times SPOILERS the ending text states
that the Marine accepts his fate of eternal confrontation with demons and decides
to close the gateway between Hell and our universe from inside, thereby staying
in Hell forever to prevent any further invasions once and for all. Which
actually created some speculation that the protagonist from the Doom 2016 reboot is the same
marine as he is described in the game as an ancient/superhuman warrior that was
either banished to hell or chose to stay there and was captured by Hell's
forces and sealed in a tomb. There’s no evidence to support this but I like to
think this was the case as it makes a lot of sense though Doom 3 will still
be next in my list before I can finally play the latest one.
Time to fist some Demons
I must admit I did not play the game on the Nintendo 64 not
having the cartridge myself. I played on
PC using the Doom64EX
modification which allowed you to play Doom 64 on PC with newer control methods
like mouse look, high resolutions and color depth using the original .ROM file.
This is somewhat similar to the Skulltag Mod
for the original Doom and the DarkXL
mod for Star
Wars Dark Forces. Though after playing through a few levels I actually
found out that the infamous Sergeant
Mark IV had created Brutal
Doom 64 which had all the goodness from the original Brutal Doom mod and brought
it into Doom 64. Changes included the usual overhauling the graphics also
adding much more detailed gore effects of course and also new weapons were
added including the assault rifle and grenade launcher.
Ah the trusty assault rifle, much better then that useless pistol.
One of the main changes
was the addition of all of the content cut from the original game due to the
Nintendo 64’s limited Cartridge space, this included the Revenant, Chaingunguy
and Spider Mastermind enemies. There was also a new enemy called the Hellhound
which is a sort of two-headed dog beast similar to Cerberus of Greek mythology
though Cerberus had three heads, the Hellhound is quite fast and shoots
fireballs so it’s a formidable foe. The levels have been revamped featuring
new decorations, lightning system, fog, light shafts, etc, techbase levels were
optimised to have better navigation, new ambient sounds, more security cameras
to remove the need of "switch hunting", and having some parts of the
levels remade to look like a more plausible place. The Hell levels were also
upgraded with new ambient sounds, and more disturbing imagery.
The Hellhound spewing fireballs from it's two maws
As before you can choose to play with the classic old school gameplay or
the tactical gameplay that has an assault rifle and all the
weapons deal more damage but need to be reloaded, the tactical gameplay mode
also has a ‘fatigue’ number that limits your sprinting which is annoying but
makes it a bit more realistic I guess. The chainsaw in Doom 64 is now twin
bladed and for some reason in the Brutal Doom 64 it now has “ammo” which I
guess is “fuel” or maybe replacement chains I don’t know, I really had no idea
even when finishing the game how I picked up more ammo for it, but anyway I
think it packed more power than the original chainsaw, it was also useful for
the nightmare imps and spectres as they were so goddamn fast you just waited
around a corner for them to get close then let er rip.
I tear it up then get confused by switches in The Lair, one of the secret levels
And so I started the
game again with much better visuals and gameplay, this time I don’t think I
even bothered trying it without godmode on as it just takes ages and gets too
hard. I made sure I checked out all of the secret levels and managed to both
get to them anddo most of them without
needing to use IDCLIP
though the first secret level MAP29: Outpost Omega was kind of
complicated the way it worked but I managed to get through them all and
collected the Demon
Keys which upgrade the Unmaker. This new weapon is also found in the secret levels
and man after being ‘fully upgraded’ this thing does some damage, you can take
down Hell knights and Cyberdemons with ease, best new
weapon in the game.
The Unmaker, now that's what I call being "Unmade"
As I mentioned before compared with the other Doom games,
Doom 64 is hella scary which is odd because the Nintendo 64 was regarded as a
kids console. The level design, the sights, the sounds and especially the music
is dark, foreboding and to be honest makes the game pretty depressing to play,
there’s quite a lot of satanic imagery around as well as dead marine bodies
though it’s not quite as horrific as the Hell
on Earth Starter Pack it was still pretty bad. The Brutal mod for the Doom
64 version is bit more subdued as it does not include fatalities and executions,
Sergeant Mark IV addressed this himself saying that unlike the original Brutal
Doom, this version is focused on making it as much as disturbing, horror and
survival-oriented possible with a much more serious tone, So there won't be
such over-the-top stuff. This was good as Doom 64 works well as this kind of
game compared to the basic violence of the original Doom and over-the-top gore
of the Brutal Doom mod.
This was an area where I first experienced an environmental trap, the blocks in the sky periodically unleash homing fireballs at you, and I was so confused the first time, also wow look at those braziers.
There is a very small storyline to the game, from the
very vague introduction in the manual you can glean that after the events of Doom II the old Phobos
and Deimos
bases have been sealed off due to apocalyptic levels of radiation though the UAC is still
monitoring the stations from earth when the receive a very disturbing last
message, apparently the hordes of Hell have been revived by the Mother Demon.
Doom 64 has 32 maps in total as per usual for Megawad The start of the game is
indeed in the planetary tech bases but that is only for the first 9 levels and
the rest are set in Hell itself yet again. And Hell has never looked scarier
especially with the better resolution, sharper textures and enhanced lighting
effects plus a killer soundtrack what’s not to like?
Ahh good old Brutal Doom, this is on the lowest gore setting "realistic" by the way
I never though Doom 64 would be like this, as I said before
I wasn’t aware there was a Doom game for the Nintendo 64 and when I found out
about it I thought it would just be a port of the older games not this amazing
scary great looking whole new thing. The level design isn’t too much of a
deviation from the original games though some of the secret levels and ways of
getting there were overly complicated, I was glad the was a Brutal version made
for the game that included all of the cut content as playing Doom without
monsters like the Spider Mastermind and the Revenant and I highly recommend you
play it on PC with the mod. Doom 64 was Doom done right and I’m glad that I
have finally experienced it, even if it’s wasn’t on the Nintendo 64 itself.
JD
Another secret level, MAP31: The Void, and it was indeed, a level with nothing underneath, and a confusing one at that.
Things I liked:
Great atmosphere, darker and scarier then the original
Good looking improved graphics including monster and weapon
models
Includes new enemies
Things I didn’t like:
Finding Secret levels and the Demon keys inside them were
often overly complicated.
Unless playing on PC with the Brutal Doom mod the game does
not include several enemies due to N64 cartridge space limitations
I for one, have been playing Minecraft for a long time,
almost since the start actually, if I can recall it was the Alpha
1.2.3_04 version from late 2010 and in case you’ve been living under a rock
it’s gotten bigger and more popular than ever becoming a franchise with
apparel/toys/home and office supplies and gadgets and other merchandise. It’s
become so big in fact that the franchise has now qualified for a Telltale game. For those of your who don’t
know Telltale Games are a game design company that focuses on episodic
gaming and digital distribution and is well known for
their game series’ that are based on TV shows such as The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, they have also
brought their own style of game to other game worlds such as Tales from the Borderlands which
is based in the Borderlands universe. As you can probably guess Telltale game
focus heavily on storytelling with most of the player interaction comes from Quick Time Events and
Dialogue
wheels though simple movement like walking around and investigating an area
is still allowed albeit with limited control and within a small area. This type
of gameplay is often referred to as Interactive movies,
the Dreamcast game Shenmue
one of the first game to feature this type of gameplay and also Heavy Rain which was a
launch title for the PS3.
The main menu, it all looks very clean.
When Telltale released Minecraft
Story Mode on Steam I was at first not very interested as it seemed like it
was for kids, then a bit later I looked at a playthrough of its and was
impressed at the design but scoffed at its limited playability, then I decided
in the end I might actually give it a go partially because it was on sale and
partially because anything Minecraft I’ll try out. So I did, and I was
pleasantly entertained, the visuals were great, who knew they could make a game
with blocks look so good and not specifically the graphics just the designs
they created in the game itself there was lots of thought put into every scene
and it looked amazing. I found myself constantly thinking of how long each area
would take to build in the original game though of course with mods like
Worldbuilder large-scale projects are made much easier. I purchased the base
game and also the Adventure
Pass so I could access all 8 chapters of the story though though
technically the first four episodes are one story the next 4 are a different
story though with the same characters and setting. Most of the lore and the
areas used are based on the main game, you even explore areas such as the Far Lands which
is a name given to the supposed “edge” of the Minecraft worlds, though there
are no traditional Villages
all of the people, houses, towns and communities are created new for the
series.
The Temple of the Order of the Stone
So we’ll start at the beginning, Minecraft Story Mode tells the
story of the The Order of the Stone which is
also the name of the first episode, the 4 members are Gabriel the Warrior,
Ellegaard
the Redstone Engineer, Magnus the Rogue,
and Soren the Architect.
The order were famous for defeating the infamous Ender Dragon and then
faded into legend. You then get to create your character with limited options,
I just went with the default white male character as it didn’t really matter to
me, you also had options to different skin colours or a female character. You
are then introduced to Jesse, a fan of Gabriel the
Warrior and a poster collector who is preparing for the EnderCon
Building Competition alongside their friends, Axel, a griefer,
and Olivia, a redstonist,
and Jesse’s pigReuben. First off
there is a brief scene in the friends treehouse where you are introduced to the
characters and the dialogue wheel which is actually kind of stressful as you
have a limited amount of time to reply and if you don’t someone takes it upon
themselves to answer for you, in contrast to The
Old Republic where you could stand around for hours staring at each other
before needing to press anything and even press escape to re-do the
conversation if you didn’t like how it turned out.
You can view all of the episodes from the start, this is the screen from the first one showing most of the main characters including (from left to right) Lukas, Jesse, Olivia, Axel, Reuben and Petra
You were then able to freely walk around and look and
interact with things inside the treehouse, yes that’s pretty much the degree of
control you have, walking around and looking at things in a smallish area.
throughout the game you can interact with other characters while doing this of
course and there are also parts of the game where you can look around multiple
areas and rooms. ‘Jesse’ also has an inventory where you can place various
items beginning with a humble wooden
sword but can be a variety of things from old favourites from the base game
like Flint and Steel to new special items acquired on
the journey like the Eversource Crown. Unlike the original game you
cannot ‘equip’ these items or use them at any time, they require a special
circumstances often involving a quick decision and a bit of fumbling around
trying to find the inventory key.
The scene is from episode five where the group are investigating Sky City , you can see the quicktime keypress prompts and the scene where you can control Jesse and walk around investigating.
Jesse and his friends then get caught up with
a scheme by the (then) bad guy Ivor who creates a Wither with an intent to
control it but it soon gets out of control becoming the Wither Storm and sucks up Gabriel along with hundreds
of other blocks and becomes gigantic and the gang adventure to the Nether in order to
find the Temple of the Order of the Stone. After this it was time for Episode 2: "Assembly Required" the main focus of
the story goes to finding the remaining members of the Order of the Stone where
you meet Magnus the Rogue and Ellegaard the Redstone Engineer,
you had a choice during this episode to either go to Redstonia to find
Ellegaard or Boom Town to find Magnus, I’m kind of regretting going to
Redstonia though now found that the choices you make determine even what
content you will see as well as changes in the story which was both cool and
annoying as it means I might have to play it again sometime hah.
The Wither Storm split into 3
Now I’m not going to go through the whole story but
basically you find Soren the Architect
who is doing experiments with Endermen in
Episode 3: The Last Place You Look and then set
out to stop the Wither storm in Episode 4:A Block and a Hard Place and I
gotta admit the last episode in that storyline was pretty epic. The next 4
episodes revolve around Jesse and his friends Petra, Lukas and the now
semi- good-guy Ivor
exploring an ancient temple then getting lost in a hallway of portals and
needing to find the way home. This series was especially good as it focused on
Minecraft culture and themes, Episode
5: "Order
Up!" focused on the Skyblock mod
for Minecraft where the gang is trapped on an island in the sky and discover a
city with limited resources and where building is illegal. Episode 6: "A Portal to Mystery" is based
ona murder/mystery movie and features
cameos from various Minecraft Youtube personalities including CaptainSparklez, LDShadowLady, Stampy
Cat, Stacy Plays and DanTDM.
Episode 7: "Access Denied" is mostly about Redstone
engineering and malevolent ai, and the final episode, Episode 8: "A Journey's End?" features Spleef
and is where they discover The Old Builders.
What can I say about the graphics well they are probably the
best part of the game, the scenery, the characters and the shading effects. I
only recently started using shaders with Minecraft but it’s amazing what they
can do, they just make the world much more realistic and atmospheric, you can
really tell the time of day and what the weather is like. I spent most of my
time marveling at the creations inside the game stuff that would take me months
to do though technically even with just another 2 people it speeds things up
greatly. Looking at the things I’ve seen on the culture section from minecraft.net and from the many servers
I’ve visited I can come to the conclusion that more people = more epic things
and besides someone developed the whole of Skyrim
and other games of equal epic scope didn’t they? and that wasn’t made of
blocks. So It’s simply the more people working at it the easier it is, I think
it’s because I just keep thinking of how long it would take me on my own to
build. The game isn’t completely true to Minecraft obviously and there are a
few creative liberties taken especially with the characters which you would
expect.
There were some pretty epic shots in the game.
As we all know your character in the original
Minecraft has very limited body movement swinging his (or her) arms and legs
apparently without any elbows or knees (or feet for that matter) and has no
facial expressions whatsoever, so it’s obvious there would need to be a change.
The character models have been modified to have working facial features
including eyebrows eyes, and mouth which is no longer a flat surface and elbow
and knee joints. The characters still looked pretty funny when moving but this
was all part of the game.The soundtrack was pretty damn good there was a mix of
ambient music similar to the original Minecraft music then there is the
orchestral soundtrack plus a bit of custom intro music it was overall pretty
good, I didn’t concentrate too hard on which music was already in Minecraft and
which music wasn’t and also which sounds were new etc, it all sounded good with
nothing out of the ordinary thrown in, not much else to say hah
I like this intro, the scene and music work well, you can also see how the characters move and speak.
It’s easy to tell the game is made primarily for kids, whole
story and interactions never include any type of adult themes, nope no violence,
sex or drug use
here though it’s been done already in the base game thanks to zealous modders.
You can almost play the entire game with one hand (cue wank jokes) and I admit
I got a bit bored just watching the cutscenes and there were quite a lot of
cringeworthy scenes. I felt compelled to interact with everything I could
though this meant longer gameplay time. I found after a while I was counting
down the episode till I finished but this was ok, the conversation choices were
fun the quicktime events were easy as usual and failing in any way put you
right back to the last decision or failed keypress. This is probably the advice
for all Telltale games if you like good storyline and don’t mind dialogue
wheels and quicktime events then this game is fine. Almost every biome,
creature, item and block makes an appearance in Story mode and it’s great to
see that Telltale and the Mojang team that worked with them have made this
possible. I heartily enjoyed Minecraft story mode which was my first telltale
game and will be back for the second season, I may even think about watching it
again.
Had to include this awesome scene of the gang riding through the nether in minecarts
JD
Things I liked:
Great graphics, smooth overall design
Entertaining story
Knowledge of subject area, items, lore etc
Things I didn’t like:
Some cringeworthy dialogue and scenes.
Needed more combat with other weapons, bows etc
8/10
That's right, here is all of the trailers for episode 1-7
Saints Row, I cannot seem to get enough of it, it was a a
while ago now that I saw the whole series on Steam sale and thought “Why not”?
I enjoyed the Third installment, why not play the 4th and the rest
of them legit? and so I did, albeit out of order. After playing the excellent Saints
Row The Third and the insane Saints
Row IV I was ready for more Saints Row but instead of going to Gat out of Hell I
thought I would go back to the beginning. Though technically I couldn’t exactly
go directly back to the beginning, the original Saints Row was on Xbox
only, and although I do have access to an Xbox I really couldn’t be bothered
buying the disc. So I decided to play Saints Row 2 which was
apparently supposed to be the best one of the series and I admit I wasn’t
disappointed but I wasn’t at all blown away either.
Just runnin' down the hood with my shotty
The first thing I noticed about the game as it was similar
to Saints Row 3, creating your character in Saints Row 2 was supposed to be
better than 3 but it wasn’t really there was about the same level of
customization, I made my character pretty basic as usual, I don’t go all crazy
as it looks ridiculous and having a fitting protagonist works much better then
someone dressed as Ronald Mcdonald. Saints Row 3 had 4 different male voices
for the protagonist, a white, black, hispanic and of course Nolan North with his
cockney British accent, He is the only one named for some reason possibly
because he’s a famous voice actor who has portrayed characters such as Nathan Drake from the Uncharted
series, Desmond Miles from the Assassin's
Creed series, in Saints Row 3 he put on a cockney British accent not
that I played the whole game with it I used the base white male voice which had
an American accent which I think suited much better. Saints Row 2 had only
Nolan North as the supposed white male voice actor so I couldn’t have the voice
I had for Saints Row 3 and 4, though this wasn’t too bad as it was fun to hear
‘Nolan’ cockney mouth his way through the film.
"The Siege" mission where you take down the brotherhood
The picks up a few years after the original Saints Row left
off, During this time, the 3rd Street Saints disband, and their legacy is
soon forgotten.[2]
With Julius
missing and the Saints gone, a power vacuum in Stilwater allowed three new
gangs to take over: The Brotherhood, The Sons
of Samedi, and The Ronin. You the protagonist and the exiled leader of
the Saints are in prison in a coma in the fictional city of Stilwater after
being blown off a yacht at the finale of the first game. Together with the
wannabe gangster Carlos Mendoza you break out of prison and head for
the mainland and shack up in this ratty old basement of
the Red Light district and man it is bad, of course you do have the option of
sprucing it up a bit which is pretty cool. There are various Cribs in the game similar to
Saints Row 3 and these can all be upgraded, your first crib has 3 overall
styles ‘cheap’, ‘classy’ and ‘pimp’ which gives each crib a makeover, The
classy style was nice for the time being having turned the basement into the
best thing it could be for a basement with carpet and painted walls and
pictures to make the place look nice and homely.
My first crib, the Red Light Loft, looking better then before
When out looking for clothes I
went pretty basic dressing up in normal jeans and sneakers with a basic tee and
a basketball jersey over the top with a 13 on the back, nice and practical, I
also added a bandana and a gold necklace for some flair as well as some rings
and a knuckle duster and a watch. All of the clothes apart from the jeans and jewelry
were coloured purple of course, I was pretty happy with the result.
You talking to me?
After rescuing the infamous Johnny Gat
from custody you all then start rebuilding the 3rd Street Saints gang gaining members and fining
a new hideout. The Saints new
hideout is an interesting place being an abandoned hotel in an underground
area of the city called Old
Stilwater only accessible by going down into the basement, Johnny explains
that an earthquake destroyed part of the city, and that the wreckage was built
over so there’s a whole section of street with shops and traffic lights and a
rail car from the time the earthquake hit in the 50’s. This is pretty cool and
looks awesome though the area is overrun with bums and Samedi gang Members and
you basically just slaughter everyone and claim the place to yourself. You then
recruit old (or new) faces such as Pierce, and Shaundi and
then basically the progression and gameplay turns into the Saints Row 3 and 4
style where you have the option of doing main missions and side missions and
other activities slowly taking over the city.
The "Good D" mission from the Ronin where they attack the Saints underground hideout.
I wasn’t exactly sure which mob to start with so I started
with the Ronin Missions. The Ronin were basically were a Yakuza-style gang, as it
seems all gangs have a particular colour, this gang’s colour is yellow. I’m not
going to spoil the story but this one had a fairly significant event in Johnny
Gat’s life that you replay in Saints Row 4 and boy did I love the Katana
battles, there’s a few of them in there too and interestingly you side with a
Chinese ally. I then battled the Sons
of Samedi which are a bunch of African Voodoo dudes who sell drugs, who you
choose Shaundi to investigate as per her drug addictions and knowledge of her
ex, the DJ
Veteran child who is working with the Samedi. Then finally you take on the The Brotherhood
where you get very personal with their Leader Maero. The last part of the
story revolves around the Ultor Corporation
and the young executive Dane
Vogel who becomes the game’s final antagonist, by defeating him and forming
an alliance with Ultor the Saints become the prominent power in Stilwater hence
the references in Saints Row the Third.
The Ronin "Kanto Connection" mission, I get my Samurai on. I like that shot at the start as I realise Pierce also wears a 13 on his shirt.
The activities were pretty usual of the series you had Heli
Assault and Insurance Fraud and Escort that I’ve
seen before but there was also new ones such as Crowd
Control where you are a bodyguard to celebrity and protect them from crazy
fans and Septic Avenger where you devalue real
estate by driving around in a waste truck and spraying shit on everything, I
enjoyed doing the Snatch mission again where you steal hookers from abusive
pimps and escort then back to supposedly a better life. A new one I really
liked was the FUZZ missions
which was like some sensationalistic version of the Cops TV series where
you bashed and murdered random criminals from drug addicts to prostitutes and
were encouraged to use increasingly brutal weapons such as the chainsaw, as you can
probably guess the game had its flair even back then. There were races as well
which were fun but overall the extra activities were pretty much like the other
games. By doing these activities you can gain more unlockables
which include abilities, weapons, homies, discounts and vehicles, I was happy
with gaining them as I went along doing missions but as I went on I soon looked
at getting particular abilities such as more health or infinite ammo for
certain guns and maybe even a certain vehicle I wanted, though there were
always lots of vehicles around.\
The FUZZ where you play as a Cop on a TV show, it's as ridiculous as it looks if the NSW Police weren't happy about the Police Mod then they certainly wouldn't like this.
Speaking of vehicles It was good to get to use them again
after playing Saints Row IV for the second time around, for those of you who
don’t know there is basically no point in driving vehicles in Saints Row IV. I
used my fair share of them and even found a nice Harley-Style bike called the Melbourne
and I also added a (Motorcycle) chopper and a Coupe which I thought was pretty
cool and I painted them in the gang colours of course. Once you open up the
main underground Saints Row crib you can customize what style of clothing your
crew wears and also what cars they drive which was fun as you can choose pretty
ludicrous things my current setup includes a saints Halberd, Attrazione
and Compton
all of which are automatically pimped to the saints colours. As you go through
the missions you gain vehicles and outfits for both your crew and yourself and
other unlockables, specifically when you finish all the missions for a
particular gang i.e. the Ronin you get access to their vehicles like the Kaneda for your Garage and
the Ninja style gang customization.
The Saints Gang Car version of the Halberd, looks pretty cool heh
Of course as being an open-world game there are dozens of
other things
you can do apart from the main missions and activities, most of which I
didn’t really touch. You can do stunt jumps, you can collect CD’s?, you can fly
planes through tight spaces, you can do the classic Taxi, Ho-ing missions and Tow
truck missions, you play mini-games like Blackjack and also rob stores and mug
people or even play an entertaining zombie uprising minigame, it’s up to you, I
actually just did the races if I can remember correctly. There’s also this
thing called Respect and Style, respect you gain from
killing gang members, completing missions, doing dangerous stunts such as
wheelies and driving on the wrong side of the road, there is just so many ways
to get it, you pretty much just do anything. Style affects how much respect you
get when you gain Respect for example better clothes, upgrading your cars and
owning more cribs grants you more style.
Drug Trafficking mission complete, with the respect gained and style bonus
Gameplay is basically the same as in Saints Row the Third but
nowhere near as refined, from early on I could smell a console port as there
was no mouse support for the main menu so I quickly knew this was going to be a
bit wonky for the PC, and wonky it was, it was badly optimized with poor frame
rates and jerky movement, it really didn’t play very well. The cars handled awfully
and were very hard to control at first, I was wondering why I had such a sore
thumb then I realized it was because almost whenever I turned a corner I used
spacebar for the handbrake because it worked all the time no matter how fast
you were going. I remember I went back to play GTA5 online at one point and
tried to drive the same way and boy it did not work at all heh. The controls
were simple enough and I managed fine as the movement and shooting was
bearable.
Yes that is Shaundi and Carlos hanging from the helicopter landing legs.
Everything is very arcade-like as in the other Saints Row games I’ve
played, even the helicopters were easy as you just had buttons for up and down
then you pointed them in the direction you wanted to go. The heli assault missions were pretty nuts, you had to blow up enemy
vans so your homies could do drug deals. What more was that they could
run out of gas then you had to pick them up which was incredibly
difficult so I was glad the chopper controls were relatively simple I spent a lot of my
time in motorcycles then finished with The
General’s Bulldog
which is customized with a gun turret on the top which you can freely control,
this made doing missions much easier as you were always being chased by an
endless supply of gang cars and having the turret there helped immensely as you
didn’t have to lean out of the car to shoot all of the time. Of course there
were some limitations, the thing was huge and it had a terrible turning circle
and wasn’t that fast, but was a choice vehicle for pretty much anything towards
the end of the game where you were fighting huge amounts of heavily armed
enemies so the durability really came in handy.
Customizing and driving the Military Bulldog, this thing was a beast.
The graphics for this game were not that remarkable and
worse than the previous Saints Row games I have played but of course this is an
earlier game from 2008 so what do you expect? Yeh some parts looked pretty bad,
the terrain in the off-road areas particularly as it seemed like they were just
a bunch of brown mush, the character models weren’t too good, some of the cars
and explosion effects looked weird. But of course it doesn’t really matter, you
don’t play a game like Saints Row to go “AWR LOOKIT DEM GREPHICS!” you play it
for the gameplay and the general craziness, Saints Row isn’t exactly famous for
its graphics compared to the likes of say Far Cry. As far as music and
sound goes it’s got the same radio station setup as Saints Row 3, in fact I
think all of the games have the same setup of radio stations for a number of
different genres from techno to classical same as Saints Row 3 and 4, I far as
music I love the games original soundtrack with its banging hiphop beats you
can’t beat the Saints for epic rap, I just don’t know how to explain it, it’s
like a blockbuster movie style the whole intro to the game and in the main menu
and it sounds great.
On the whole graphics weren't the best but it was the soundtrack that made it
Ultimately if you liked Saints Row 3 then you will like 2,
if you liked 2 then you’ll like 1 etc. My only regret was that I played it
without realizing there was one particularly huge mod that was made for the PC
game titled Gentleman
of the Row. This mod added a ton of new features to the game mostly
clothes, vehicles, cribs and customization options similar to a Skyrim mod,
though it also added new walking animations and taunts. Not only that it added
and optional first person mode, increased FOV and an option to remove the HUD
for screenshots. I was kinda annoyed that I didn’t play it with this mod but
meh it was still good anyway and I had fun with it, next up in the Saints Row
agenda is Gat
out of Hell which I may play with a friend as it has CO-OP.
I like this shot, it's got all the main players in it except for Johnny Gat
I’ve found I’ve forgotten to do the score and the “things I
like and didn’t like” for the games I review so I’ll start that again now.
Things I liked:
General Saints Row craziness
Always Entertaining story
Vehicle design and customization
Character customization
Entertaining side activities
Things I didn’t like:
Poorly developed console port
Poorly optimized gameplay and graphics with jerky movement
Release date: April 28, 2015 Genre: First-Person Shooter Publisher:M2H, Blackmill Games Developer: M2H, Blackmill Games Engine:Unity Platforms: Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One Modes: Multiplayer Only
Verdun,
one of the bloodiest battles of The Great War and an appropriate name for the
most realistic WW1 shooter out today. It was my housemate Brok that first
introduced me to it, the game was curiously released in the shadow of Battlefield 1 yes even a
year before it came out there was a lot of talk about the new Battlefield game
would be going to the World War 1 front. When I first saw game known as Verdun I realized
that this was actually a much more realistic first person shooter then
Battlefield will ever be and decided to give it a go.
The treacherous Front lines
Verdun is set in the midst of the First World War and as the
title says specifically the western front from 1914 to 1918, it features many
of the famous battlegrounds of the time including Battle of Champagne, TheMeuse-Argonne Offensive and Fort
Douaumont itself. The game has a heavy squad focus rewarding you for
teamwork and especially rewarding players who play in the same squad regularly,
it features Realistic World War 1 gameplay: Authentic weaponry with realistic
bullet physics, skill based weapon handling, gore, poisonous gas with a
claustrophobic gas mask experience, realistic gore and artillery barrages. The
“Frontlines” game mode is true trench warfare that forces you to attack or defend in tandem with the enemy.
Each side fights over a turn-based frontline map that consists of multiple
sectors that can be captured by either side. Staying true to the
typical attrition warfare of that time, both sides attack and
counter-attack each other in turn, so you will be forced to defend each
captured sector of trenches. The goal is to capture the enemy‘s HQ sector in
order to win the game.
The trenches of Argonne, I think I had HDR on at that point.
Verdun it looks the part too right when you load the game
you’re in a trench with some classic WW1-era music playing on the stereo and
the whole setting feels very true to the era. Though the menu is a bit
confusing in the way you choose your gamemode first i.e. the most prominent
mode: Frontlines. You need to join a squad first and then it loads you into
whatever map that squad is in, and then you also have the option of “Playing
Now” which is bloody annoying cause I keep accidentally pressing it twice and
it jumps into the first available squad which wouldn’t be a problem apart from
the times it dumps you into servers with no players. There are various other
modes including: Attrition which is basically team deathmatch with a ticket
bleed and Rifle Deathmatch which is pretty self explanatory. The only offline
mode is “Squad defense” which pits you against waves of NPC opponents that are
pretty damn stupid, they often run right past you then all crowd at the
objective and whoever was lucky enough to go the machinegunner class gets to
mow them all down, it was all quite ludicrous but anyway we didn’t play that
mode much.
The Game mode screen with the map of the western front
In Verdun the main game is Frontlines, and you join a squad
in either the Western Powers or the Entente, you have a role within the squads
themselves which are in the nation’s language so are often hard to decipher.
The squad roles are called various different things depending on which military
you are fighting for but usually encompass a Sharpshooter who has access to
Sniper Rifles, a Bombardier who has access to grenades, traps and other
explosive devices, a Machinegunner and an Officer. The officer is different as
he usually only carries a pistol but has various abilities including being able
to issue attack and defend commands and the ability to be a forward spawn point
for the team. Officers also have special abilities such as the ability launch
artillery strikes, mustard gas and recon planes to reveal enemy locations.
Playing Frontlines restricts the areas that you can move around as when you are
defending you are forbidden from running forward of the trench area and when
you are attacking and there are obviously edges of the map you cannot go like
every other game. In all of the maps there are capture points and capturing
these within a certain time allows you to move forward and eventually capture
the enemies main base and in turn the enemy can “gain a foothold” and capture
the area back if they have enough soldiers in the area similar tothe tug of war trench warfare of WW1 with a
shifting frontline.
A basic display of how the Frontlines mode works, one side attacks, the other defends and the rest is hotsory :D
Verdun seems to focus a lot on Squads which are based on
historical units such as the British Tommies and the German Stoßtrupp, the squad
levelling system is quite confusing as you can only level up the type of squad
you are in. So for example the Canadians are an Assault type squad therefore have more
assault type weapons and the officers can launch gas attacks at the enemy
whereas the French Chasseur Alpins are a Recon type squad with sniper rifles
and espionage abilities and officers have the recon plane ability. Additionally
to this the squads have Abilities and Progression trees which are sort of like
a tech tree in a game like Age of Empires, as you level up you gain additional
abilities such as better sprint time, reload times, spawn times, weapon
efficiency etc and also the officer abilities are upgraded from more lethal
types of gas to bigger artillery rounds. Playing the same type of squad
regularly with the same people is the best way to level your squad abilities
but sadly if you play on your own this is almost impossible as there are 7
types of squads and you’re always playing with different people.
The Squad Ability Tree
Confused yet? So now we get to your personal progression
system. In the past you obtained new weapons and equipment by levelling up your
specified squad role in order to obtain more equipment i.e. rifleman role would
unlock the scoped rifles. But now as per this
post by the developers , everything is done through the ‘Career system’ In
this mode you have a personal career level with 77 as the max level and you
obtain 2 career points per level so as per the diagram below you can use your
career points to open up the different types of loadouts for your squad role.
These new unlocks are not inherently better (i.e. tier 3 may not be better then
tier 2) they just give more options of equipment for your role.
Picking your squad Specialisation
Once you have all this stuff worked out it’s time to
actually play the game! It’s pretty self-intuitive, it’s your regular WASD keys
to move and you can also crouch, prone and sprint, and the shift key also
allows you to hold your breath when aiming which is quite useful when trying to
shoot enemies from afar and I keep forgetting to do it. There is also keys for
grenades and your gas mask, and yes you can jump. When playing the game it’s
very important to play the objective and help your squad by performing your
squad role correctly, the abilities of your class may give you the chance to
earn additional points. For example the machinegunner will get more points for assists
and the sniper more points for longshots and of course running ahead in a
gung-ho approach really does not work. When attacking yes you have to move
forward but your best tactic is to conserve your sprint power and run between
cover and shell holes and inch your way to the front, this is especially true
with the Officer class as you can act as a forward spawn point right near the
capture point.
Playing as an Officer and Machinegunner on Artois with my friends Brok (Ya Gramps) and Tyler (The Barron) towards the end we encounter mustard gas unfortuantely.
The fighting in this game true to real life is brutal,
almost every rifle and machinegun in the game can kill a player with one shot
to the chest or head, so everyone is running around with the itchiest trigger
fingers ever. A split second could be the difference between you seeing and
shooting your opponent to them doing the same and damn is it alternately gratifiying
and infuriating if you make the shot or fall face first into the mud and fall
you will, successfully getting a bullet into someone while they run through the
dirt and watching their body slump onto the ground is one of the most
satisfying sights ever in contrast to the Battlefield series where you have to
riddle them with bullets or get a headshot before they go down. What makes
things worse is that all of the colours blend into each other with the gritty
realistic scheme and environment and the character models look very similar so
often you don’t know it’s an enemy until it’s too late especially when you are
changing factions with different uniforms all of the time so thank god for
friendly fire being off as more than once I’ve fired at a random shadow in the
darkness then realizing it was a teammate. Some of the best moments I’ve had
are as the machinegunner and racking up lots of kills with the rapid fire.
I try out sharpshooting on the Picardie map, I swear I had a scope on but the movie oddly doesn't show it.
The environment and setting of Verdun are all top-notch, all
the locations have that gritty WW1 feel and the attention to detail is
incredible. I actually only realized after a while that I had the gore turned
off by default, and when I turned it on boy was there a change, there were body
parts being blown off and soldiers screaming and writhing on the ground and oh
that was more like it. The various historical maps looked great too, from the
barren trench laden Argonne to the heavily wooden Aisne. Some of my favourites included Vosges which was set in a sparse rocky pinewood forest and Champagne which was the only night map and prime example of
heavily entrenched forces, with that map you had two choices, run through the
deep trenches as they wind around or risk running along the top where there is
a high chance of being shot or getting tangled in the barbed wire and boy is
there a lot of it. Flanders is probably
one of the hardest maps to move forward as it’s caked in mud and water and
there is barely any cover. Moving through these environments feels great and
you really feel like you are part of something compared with other FPS games
where you are in a team but it’s still every man for himself.
Playing the night map 'Champagne' with my friend Brok, there were only a few players in this game.
The graphics in Verdun are very crisp and realistic looking,
there is so much detail in the player models and the maps, the trees the
branches the leaves the rough terrain, everything is modelled true to the era,
I can run the game at ultra setting with no problem so it’s very optimized as
well, even when it’s raining. I play everything on Ultra but leave off the
fancy features such as “High dynamic range” “Depth of Field” “Ambient
Occlusion” and all that stuff that’s supposed to make the game look better but
just downs your FPS, High Dynamic range actually look pretty cool but it makes
the sky to bright and the dark bits too dark, I still leave anti-aliasing on
though I know have a 1440p monitor now. The sounds are good, rifle shots sound
great and so do the explosions and the whistles from the officers, there isn’t
really any music apart from the excellent authentic tunes coming from the radio
In the menu screen and the squad intro music when you join a squad depending on
which type of army you are in .
I try out Sniping in the Wooded Vosges map
If you were to ask me which game I enjoy better between
Verdun and Battlefield 1 it’d be a hard choice, Battlefield 1 has many more features
and classes and of course vehicles but that’s not what this game is about, It
would be nice to be able to be a medic in the game though. Of course BF1 is a
bit arcade or generic FPS and has arguably been the same game since Battlefield
3 just with a different skin. Verdun you can tell has been made specifically to
be as accurate as possible to the trench warfare of WW1, the kills are so much
more satisfying then BF1 and you congratulate yourself on each one. Playing
Verdun with friends is great especially if you play regularly, there is enough
content in there including maps, weapons and classes to keep you busy for a
while. Verdun is the best modern WW1 game out there that I know of and fills a
void that is missing from Battlefield 1 which glosses over trench warfare in its
entirety and If you’re a fan of first person shooters at all then you should
give it a go at least once. When I’m sick of all the constant explosions and
planes and tanks rumbling all over the place I know where to go to
