Paragraph Game Reviews

Lately I’ve been really bad at sticking to my format and I think that is probably going to continue for the foreseeable future.

Like many people I grew up playing both the Star Wars Battlefront games, I have countless fond memories of spending time with my friends on the Star Wars battlefields mowing down enemies or tripping up AT-AT’s with snow speeders.  You can imagine my excitement when I heard that DICE (one of my favorite studios) was developing another game in the series.

I’ve played about two hours according to the stats tracking in the beta, but I believe that is one of things that is currently a bit broken in the beta, I can say that without a doubt this is probably one of the most enjoyable time investments that I’ve made in recent years. The beta features two game types, a sort of King of The Hill style game and a sort of linear progressions through the Battle of Hoth, arguably one of the most iconic scenes in science fiction history.

I spent most of my time playing the Walker Assault on Hoth, but I did give the drop pod king of the hill style matches a go on a couple occasions. The concept of capturing a point and defending it is not new by any means, but it is executed exceptionally well here.  Sullest, a planet from the upcoming Force Awakens film, provides nearly an ideal battlefield for this sort of game type, with it’s rocky outcrops and natural corridors it provides both a high ground and a close quarters type situation.  After taking a pod and waiting for it to capture players are forced to set up camp and defend against oncoming players, on the other side of things players trying to capture the pods have multiple ways to attack and if well coordinated can easily attack from two or three directions and overwhelm the opposing team.

Walker Assault has the Empire attacking the Rebel base on Hoth and makes a few departures from DICE’s recent shooter titles. The AT-AT’s are not completely player controlled as they were in the previous titles or like the vehicles in the Battlefield series, instead opting for a timed power up style system where players control the gunner’s seat for about a minute, the same applies to the heroes in the game.  Battlefront never feels like there’s and empty battlefield due to its nearly instant respawns. No matter where you are on the field there are blaster bolts and vehicles whizzing past giving the game a real sense of danger and really instilling an incredible amount of immersion. Both Luke and Vader are forces to be reckoned with, they both have the ability to block blaster bolts coming from in front of them, requiring a bit of teamwork to take down in a timely manner. I often found myself running away from either of them knowing that by myself I couldn’t take them down. Walker Assault is built to be a bit unbalanced, the Empire has to defend the AT-AT’s as they make their way across the map toward the power generators. Meanwhile the Rebels must secure uplinks to call in Y-Wings to bomb the AT-AT’s, taking down their shields momentarily and making them vulnerable to damage.

Battlefront does have a few issues in it’s present state. Personal shield generators last too long and have too short of a cool down. Cycler rifles are a one shot kill if a player lands a headshot, or deal 90% damage if the shot lands anywhere else on the body, which wouldn’t be an issue if the cycler rifles didn’t pass through shields or had an incredibly short cool down time in the neighborhood of 7 seconds. Flying the vehicles around the battlefield feels oddly clunky, as if there is no real agility or fine control that can be gotten out of them by even the finest pilots.

Rainbow Six Siege is the the latest entry in the Rainbow Six franchise and the first outing on the newest generation of consoles, recently the beta was available to anyone with a code.

Siege brings some interesting new mechanics to the table, while also removing some of the stand bys of the previous two Vegas games. The most noticeable change is the introduction of new gadgets that mix up gameplay a bit and the addition of an asymmetric multi-player. The most noticeable absence is in the department of player customization, the Vegas games let you control the armoring levels, and cosmetic characteristics of your character, while in Siege you can choose from a set of of premade characters.

Technically speaking the Siege beta is a crap shoot. Siege supposedly utilizes a dedicated server system to help even the playing field, yet time after time I was met with a “Host disconnected. You will be disconnected.” message, something that shouldn’t exist in a dedicated server system. There are a myriad of visual glitches, but I am cautiously optimistic that all of the bugs will be squashed before release.

Gameplay wise Siege is par for the course, living in the realm of somewhat tactical gameplay. There’s still nothing better than someone vault out a window of forgetting to utilize a ladder, even when it cost me a round victory it was still incredibly hilarious. The real success of Siege depends on your ability to work as a team, when you are clearing rooms in groups, suppressing enemies while the others flank or move up into new cover it is thrilling and engaging. The only gripe I have is the survivability of the suicidal bomber enemies, for an enemy type that can literally wipe your whole squad at once they are far too hard to kill.

Fury Road turned out to be one of the best action movies of the year, if only the same could be said for Mad Max’s video game outing. Fury Road and the game are very loosely tied, Scrotus (yes that name is hilarious and I always laugh at it like a 12 year old) shows up in the game, but really he is the only character in both the game and movie. Mad Max is at its best when its highlighting its vehicular combat, and there are some pieces there that even fall short, your mechanic/companion often provides exposition on some of the mechanics of the game, but at other times the game just pops up a stupid message in your face to tell you that your harpoon isn’t leveled up enough, in the end it feels inorganic compared to the rest of the mechanic explanation. The combat is pretty entertaining, but it feels like there is some input lag on the buttons. One of the best parts of Mad Max is the desert wasteland, it provides some incredibly beautiful spectacles especially at dusk and dawn.

The Arkham series has long been a the pinnacle of modern action brawlers, deservingly really, each has had a competent story, side activities and an unmatched combat system. Arkham Knight continues this legacy but has more pitfalls than previous entries in the series. Gotham is vibrant, much like it is in those shitty fucking Joel Schumacher films, neon radiates from signs onto the whole city creating a sickingly bright picture of Gotham. Yet on some level it works, it’s a stark contrast to the otherwise dark and gloomy Gotham we’ve seen before. The story is appealing but somewhat predictable. The worst thing about this game? The fucking batmobile. It handles like ass when in noncombat mode and the consistency between what it can and can’t smash through is almost non-existant, the whole bat mobile experience feels unnatural and forced in.

With Batmobile, 7.75/10.

Without Batmobile, 10/10 fucking GOTY.

The problem with Fez is that I really want to like it. It’s one of the more competent puzzle platformers I’ve played recently. I hate platformers so damn much, but Fez has convinced me to give them another chance. It’s just too damn bad that I think Phil Fish is a pretentious asshole and my opinion of him has tainted my view of the game.

So I have never played any other entries in the Witcher series, before taking the plunge I immersed myself into the lore, which it turns out there is a lot of. That significant amount of lore is the foundation of what makes the Witcher 3 The Wild Hunt an incredible game.

Wild Hunt from the very beginning throws you into the culture of the Witchers, a group of mutated human beings who hunt monsters, who are universally reviled by the people they protect. The story follows Geralt as he hunts for his former protege Circi along the way battling The Wild Hunt, a group of spectral warriors that are closer to boogeymen than an actual army, they come and go in an instant and destroy and plunder villages as they please, with the only trace of their visitation being the signature frost that is left in their wake. The games world is bolstered by the seemingly infinite books and notes encountered in your adventures that either provide additional back story or insight into the monsters of the world. In addition to being one of the most immersive worlds in recent history The Wild Hunt is god damn gorgeous, despite the downscaling from the E3 graphics, The Wild Hunt is the new Crysis, demanding high end PC requirements and delivering stunning visual effects. As far as games go this year The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt may be the best release to date and is a very strong contender for Game Of The Year, and given the current release schedule it doesn’t appear to have much competition. 

Warframe as usual.

and you guessed it The Witcher 3. God that game is beautiful, even on the lowest settings it looks a lot better than most modern games, really it is kind of like the new Crysis, visually stunning for its time, the difference being that The Witcher 3 is actually fun to play.

Fuck this game. 

It is a desolate wasteland in terms of new games so I’ve been bored out of my mind, but there is a glimmer of hope.

GTA V IS FINALLY ON PC

I have waiting so long for this day and it has mostly been worth it. Compared to its predecessor it is lift a gift from the gods, on my somewhat midrange hardware GTAIV could barely run. I have the recommended specs for GTAV and it runs mostly fine, a couple hitches here and there, but nothing too bad.

The thing I find most puzzling is Rockstar making modding so difficult with hashes for both single player and multiplayer, I understand why online play would be so heavily regulated, but not the restrictions on singleplayer. The modding community is at least partially responsible for the success of GTAIV, especially in recent years. That being said people are already finding work arounds.