Star Wars Battlefront Beta Review (Xbox One)

By Sam Coles:

We’ve all been waiting for a new Star Wars Battlefront game for the best part of 10 years now, but finally we have a new one on the way brought to us by DICE who most famous for the Battlefield series. What I’ve experienced of this beta so far is that it’s ok but nothing mind blowing, but it has balance issues with Walker Assault which I’ll get into.

Let’s get the good out way first to soften the blow with the negatives I have with this beta. The presentation is fantastic it’s what I would expect from DICE in terms of visual fidelity. The environments look beautiful of what I’ve seen so far from the crisp snow on Hoth to the blood red canyons of Tatooine. Even down to the explosions and damage that guns make when they hit walls, vehicles and people you see sparks fly everywhere creating this chaos with the battle that you would expect. It’s nice that the game runs at a blistering 60 frames per second for the most part, but however it does only run at a resolution of 720p on Xbox One in the beta.

As per usual in the sound design department at DICE they’ve nailed it! They’ve mixed the sounds of the Star Wars such as the blasters and Tie Fighters with that Battlefield sound, so it sounds like they’ve added in the grunt of a real firearm with the noises of blasters. It helps you get sucked into the environment with chaos around with the explosions and the shouts of your follow soldiers.

So now let’s get into gameplay and features of the Beta. 

You have three modes to choose from:

·        Walker Assault

·        Drop Zone

·        Missions: Survival.

Walker Assault was a great Idea but however at the time of this review when I played it, it was horrendously unbalance and is always in favour of the Empire. I don’t think I played a game as the Rebel Alliance and won Walker Assault. So here is how Walker Assault works, you have two AT-AT’s slowly pushing up trying to stop you from turning uplinks on, which is a similar vein to Rush from Battlefield. This is a great idea on paper it should work right? No it does not work well at all because the Walkers take too long to destroy and I’m not saying make their health low but make them a tad easier to destroy. The reason why I say this is most of the time when you’ve destroyed one AT-AT the second is already at the shield generator. So I wish they would balance this before it launches on the 20^th of November.

Drop Zone is nothing too special two teams fight over drop pods that are randomly dropped around the map and you have to defend them for a short amount of time to gain power ups. I liked playing this mode but my problem is that it’s not anything that I’ve haven’t played before and in my opinion it’s a bit run of the mill.

Now Missions were very controversial because DICE said that they’re not including a single player campaign, but they said you can play missions single player. What mission do we get in the beta? Bloody horde mode! I thought we got over horde mode after Gears of War 3 I don’t understand how this mundane mode is still so popular? You fight off waves of enemies that increase in difficulty over and over agian, mowing down enemy after enemy in the same spot just isn’t fun it’s a snore fest.

So let’s talk gameplay when you’re out on the field and power ups etc. The gameplay is competent you shoot at the enemy and they eventually die, but don’t hold down the trigger for too long because the blasters over heat. There is a small mini game where you can do a sort of active reload in the same style of Gears of War to skip the wait of the gun cooling down period.

Now the main thing about this game in terms of operating vehicles and assuming controls of heroes of villains is annoying. So how it works with vehicles is that you’ll find small blue icons which will be in the shape of said vehicle which is a pain to spot in whiteness of Hoth. This is annoying because using vehicles is no longer a choice and becomes a scavenger hunt to find them. The charm of the old Battlefronts is that you could be a specialist with certain aspects such as being a pilot of ground vehicles or providing air support from an X-Wing or Tie Fighter, but it’s not an option in this game. The Heroes and Villains system works the same so anyone can be Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker without earning it like in Star Wars Battlefront II.

So after each match when you level up you’ll gain currency to unlock “Cards” for your loadout such as thermal detonators or jetpacks. My main issue with this is why don’t you let me have a grenade from the start? That is also a huge issue as well because you get infinite thermal detonators! I’m not joking and yes there is a cool down time but it runs down far too quick and I noticed a massive problem with spamming especially in the hanger on Hoth. So I was in this situation where I was constantly dying because of the grenade spamming this needs to be addressed they need to slow the cool down time by a mile or the logical thing to do is to give you limited amount of grenades.

Overall Star Wars Battlefront is a bit of a mess at this point in the Beta phase with the unbalance nature to Walker Assault to the boring horde mode in Missions. They need to get into gear and address these problems because over wise they’re going to have some very unhappy gamers. 

Call of Duty 2 - Still Holds Up After 10 Years.

By Sam Coles:

When you hear the title Call of Duty these days you'll get a sigh of fatigue from gamers or people saying that it is crap when it's not when they're functional games, but what do I know. Back in 2005 Infinity Ward released a fantastic launch title for the Xbox 360 simply named Call of Duty 2 and it wasn't modern or futuristic, but it retold a grounded biography of the missions that actually happened during World War II. It was a tense campaign which didn't resort to theatrics to keep the players attention, but instead put you into tense and dangerous situations that the soldiers of the time would have experienced.

So how the campaign is set is that you step into the shoes of soldiers from 3 different countries and different frontlines such as the Soviet Union during the Nazi invasion of Stalingrad, the British during the campaign of North Africa and finally the Americans in France Normandy. Each campaign is well paced with really tense moments such as the American campaign when you’re scaling the wall in Normandy as you have Germans trying to gun you down from the top of the cliff.

So if you’ve played any of the Call of Duty games you’ll be very familiar with the controls in this game although you can’t sprint in this game, but you don’t really need it in this game as your character has a decent pace. You can aim down sights which will help shoot precisely with a variety of interesting weapons of the period. Such as the M1 Garand for the Americans, the Lee Enfield for the Brits and the Papa Sha for the Soviets which was nicked named the burp gun because of its lead output.

Visually the game still holds up with its different locales, which keeps the game fresh, it also helps that it has multi-layered objectives so you’ll get several objectives such as destroy mortar crew A, B and C instead of doing objective after objective. You’ll fighting your way through the snowy tundra streets of a ruined Stalingrad, to the burning sands of North Africa and the rural country side of France. The detail in each area looks great for game that came out 10 years ago and it still holds for what it was trying to do back then.

The negatives that really have with this game is that it resorts to the old fashion way of progression by endlessly respawning enemies until you’ve hit the checkpoint, this really stands out as a flaw when you play this game on higher difficulties especially veteran. The other is that the A.I programming of other enemy soldiers has a habit of spamming grenades all the time and it makes you run around the battlefield like an idiot and it’s worse on veteran as you have 10 grenade markers on the screen.   

Call of Duty 2 is a game that doesn’t resort to theatrics to hold your attention like it does now, but instead gives interesting and tense situations to fight through with a lengthy campaign that is challenging and intresting. This game is a blast and still holds up today and is super cheap these days and easy to find so pick it up if you a spare few quid in your pocket.   

John Woo's Stranglehold - Gloriously Over the Top

By Sam Coles:

These days’ games always aspire to tell good stories with a deep meaning but sometimes I just want some good old fashion hardcore violence that has a simple context, which you then gun down everything in your way. Well John Woo has your back with his game that got a lukewarm reception back in 2007 with his game Stranglehold. I don’t know why it got a negative reception because in my opinion if you take it for what it is a fun high octane action game with bullet time and fantastic guncarter then you can easily enjoy it.

John Woo’s Stranglehold is a sequel to his 1992 film Hard Boiled which had the no nonsense cop named Inspector Tequila who is a bad ass who likes to get his hands dirty and work outside of the guidelines of the law to get things done more efficiently. You’re on the hunt for a police officer, who has gone missing well he thinks he has gone missing, but he is dead and no that is not a spoiler it happens at the very beginning of the game. The story is very clichéd but it sets up the context for the carnage you’re about to embark on.  

The gameplay with this game is fun and over the top with guncarter and throwing Tequila around the level which by the end of level you would think his rib cage would be destroyed with the amount of times you make him dive from the top of a staircase 50 times in one sitting. The game keeps score of your over the top antics with a star rating and how many enemies you have gun down in a row which makes you want to get the best combo you can with this score system, which is very addictive. You have the slow motion gun play like the John Woo movies so you’ll be diving through the air with duel pistols with other acrobatics such as sliding down banisters, riding on trolleys through a busy market place with duel SMG’s or flying down a zip line. The possibilities are varied and it keeps the game flowing as it encourages you to keep moving and not stay in one spot.

Graphics wise it’s not bad for a game that was released in 2007 and the game is very advanced for the time with its destructibility with the physics because you can tear an environment apart, and it is especially fun when you have a shotgun and you destroy a restaurant.

Overall John Woo’s Stranglehold is a great action game and if you take it for what it is a generic action game you’ll have a blast with it and plus it is super cheap these days, you can pick it up for about £2.

Destiny: The Taken King - Legendary Edition Review.

By Sam Coles:

If you’re familiar with my blog you’ll know that my impressions of Destiny when I reviewed it this time last year were a resounding meh. After 1 year of the game being out and the release with The Taken King with the Legendary Edition it’s the game it should have been and my opinion has completely changed. So what do you get in this Legendary Edition? Well you get Expansion 1: The Dark Below, Expansion 2: The House of Wolves and The Taken King in on package.

The story of the Taken King revolves around the antagonist called Oryx who is the son of the previous villain from the Dark Below Crota. He has started take different races such as the Fallen and the Kabal to turn them into the Taken which are a phantom like being that can teleport all over the place which are very annoying in battle. You must stop Oryx before he can take over the galaxy. The campaign for this expansion is interesting enough to keep you playing through it because it’s what the Destiny campaign should have been because the characters are interesting and it doesn’t leave you twisted in the wind with the context of the fights it actually tells you.

The gameplay hasn’t changed all that much so if you’re familiar with Halo gun play then you’ll be right at home with this game because it is very similar. You get a new sub class in my case as I am a Titan I got the Sunbreaker which is a hammer that is on fire which shoots fire balls with each swing which causes a huge amount of damage. The way I look at this game with its genre I think of it as 

Diablo but in first person, bear with me. It has the same chaotic looting system where you slowly upgrade your armour and weapons coupled with the great multiplayer co-op where you can take down harder enemies and bosses. This gameplay really hooks you because it has that just one more level factor to it because you want to discover rarer and rarer weapons and amour.

Big disclaimer though make sure that you’re a certain level before you even think about tackling The Taken King because you have to be at least level 30 because otherwise it will kick your arse and repurpose you as a paint brush with your blood. So what I would recommend is taking on the first two expansions first because they’re fairly low level expansions and make sure you’ve finished the vanilla Destiny content as well. Another thing you have to take into the mind is the raid I would recommend being level 40 before you even touch it and make sure you have 7 hours to spare because it’s longer than the House of Wolves raid.

But overall this expansion has given me a reason to give this game a second chance and I love it now, so if you’re still unsure about getting Destiny then buy the Legendary Edition because it actually feels like a complete game now.

Gears of War Ultimate Edition Review - How a Remaster is Done.

By Sam Coles:

With the sudden emergence (no pun intended) with the lazy remasters where they just slap 1080p and 60 frames a second, there are a few that aren’t lazy Gears of War Ultimate Edition is a great from the ground up remake that shows what you can do when you put in some effort. This sort of remake/remaster is great because the game visually hasn’t aged well as it is 10 years old next year, so the Collation made this to get ready for Gears of War 4.

 

So story of Gears of War is about a war between the humans and a race of creatures called Locust that live underground, which have now emerged to claim the surface for themselves. You play as Marcus Fenix a veteran from the COG, but he has been locked up in prison because he is a traitor. He is later pardoned for his crimes and his comrade Dominic Santiago comes and busts him out to once again pick up his Lancer and fight the Locust Horde.

The gameplay of Gears of War redefined how third person action games should be designed with elements such as a simple, but useful cover mechanic to a stable over the shoulder camera. It’s easy to learn the gameplay in Gears but it’s tough to master because this game requires very quick reflexes in the singleplayer and multiplayer. In order to succeed in this game you must perfect the headshot especially in multiplayer and in singleplayer on Hardcore difficulty and above. When start getting headshots you get into a rhythm almost and you get them consistently.

 

You have a variety of weapons that are unique such as your main primary weapon being the fun Lancer which has a chainsaw bayonet which it never gets old sawing enemies in half as your character roars in rage. The gnasher shotgun which if you’re smart especially in the multiplayer this will always be you’re number two weapon because it is great for those tense close quarter battles which is so satisfying when you land a headshot or blow them to pieces. Other special weapons are more exotic and you don’t get too much ammo for such as the Torque bow which is an explosive bow and arrow type weapon and the Boomshot which is a grenade launcher type weapon use them wisely because ammo is scarce for these weapons. You also get access to two side arms the snub pistol which is more or less useless so I would immediately recommend ditching it for the much better boltok pistol which is a powerful hand cannon which is good for nailing headshots or blowing enemies to smithereens.

 

Graphics have been given a fresh coat of paint and completely overshadows the original game, they have redone the cutscenes by reshooting the mocap and the redoing the faces on the characters so they actually look as if they’re reacting to the situation rather them looking like they have too much Botox in the face so they can’t move their mouth. The singleplayer runs at 1080p and 30 frames per second, but the multiplayer runs at 60 fps which does baffle me because it feels so good at 60 and it’s just a bit bizarre and jarring when you switch between the two because of the frame rate difference and I don’t know why they made it 30 fps with the singleplayer.

 

 

The multiplayer has been fine-tuned and is acutally playable because it runs on dedicated servers and not the painfully laggy peer to peer servers from 2006 and remember the internet was still somewhat slow in the year 2006. You have a variety of modes such as Team Deathmatch I don’t need to explain, King of the Hill where you have to capture and hold annexes, 2v2 gnashers where two teams of two fight it out with shotguns, Warzone where you only have one life and you have to eliminate all the players in the space of four rounds and execution where you have to kill players with executions only.

Gears of War Ultimate Edition is a great remake and is a great way to get ready for Gears of War 4 and it also comes with access to the Gears of War 4 beta. If you haven’t played Gears before this a great place to start and if you play from now to 31 of December you get the other Gears games for free when the backwards compatibility launches. If you own an Xbox One pick this game up if you want some good old fashion hardcore violence.

The Elder Scrolls Online Xbox One Review - Tamriel is Yours To Explore (Sort of)

By Sam Coles:

 

When The Elder Scrolls Online first launched on PC back in 2014 it was far from stellar as the mechanics weren’t great with things such as you only getting 1 gold from killing each enemy and micro transactions that you would expect in a free to play and on top of that they were expecting a monthly subscription fee. Now it has come to consoles where they have fixed some of the problems from the original release but it’s not perfect so let’s dive in shall we.

 

Usually the story isn’t hugely important in MMO’s but this is The Elder Scrolls and they try to make it important and after the prologue you’ll swiftly forget about it. The story takes place 1000 years before the events of Skyrim which is odd because technology hasn’t changed in that space of time, anyway the Daedric lord Molag Bal has invaded the world of Tamriel, but at the same time there is a civil war happening between three factions which you will play a role in.

 

 

Before you set off in the world you must first create your character and choose from a vast collection of races and also you must choose your class and what faction you will fight for. The four classes that you have are:

Dragon Knight:

The Dragon Knight is a class that is very powerful dealing huge amounts of damage and are well suited to close quarters battles so you would want a player like this when you’re raiding tight dungeons. The weapons that they specialise in are two handed weapons such as great swords, battle axes and war hammers.

Sorcerer:

Well if you’re a veteran of any RPG you would know what this class does and specialises in, they are the class that uses magic by using magical staffs and which can conjure up many different elemental spells or you can use summoning spells to have creatures fight for you it’s the more creative class.

Templar:

This class can have multiple roles as they can use magic where they can wield staffs as healers, but at the same time they can also use a sword shield this is great if you’re not sure what class to pick as it is a middling role in my opinion because the one I picked.

Nightblade:

This class is basically what other games would call a rogue who use duel weapons such as daggers and most of their special attacks are stealth based so if you want to be a dirty thief then this class is the class for you.

 

 

You’ll have most of Tamriel to explore from the Cyrodiil to the southern rain forests of Elsweyr but you can’t explore all of it because I expect they’ll add them in at a later date. However this isn’t a traditional Elder Scrolls game where you can explore anything to hearts content, no this is an MMO so areas will have certain level enemies, such as the starting area you’ll encounter mobs that will be between level 1-16 and the further you explore the higher the levels get so make you sure you’re at the right level before exploring a certain area because otherwise you’ll die a lot.

 

 

Gameplay wise well if you’ve played Skyrim it’s very similar even down to the user interface with the compass and the menu. Combat happens in real time so you’re not just sat there watching an animation play out while you let the game calculate if you’ve hit them or not. Your earn XP from combat, finding lore books and the obvious one completing quest, which will allow to increase health, stamina and mana but you’ll get a chance to unlock a slot for different attacks, defences and distractions and you can evolve them so they can become more powerful or turn into something completely different.

 

 

Graphics aren’t anything to ride home about and to be honest it looks like something from the Xbox 360 but the 7^th generation couldn’t of handled such a large game with the player count and the size of the map, so I understand why the graphics aren’t anything mind blowing and plus it is a multiplayer game so you do have sacrifice graphics sometimes. Not to say that game looks bland each area is different which keeps it fresh and you see the surprising amount of effort that has gone into the architecture in the cities, towns and small villages you come across on your adventure.

 

The negatives I really have with this game is that it is very repetitive because some of the quests just seem to blur together by the end of it, so I would highly recommend getting a group of friends together to get full enjoyment out of this game because on your own it is fairly boring. Also the gold rewards can be a tad pitiful and the best way to get around in this game is by horse and the starting cost of a horse is about 14,000 gold and you generally only get about 100-400 gold in each quest.

 

Overall though Elder Scrolls Online is competent but nothing that is going to blow your mind, if you’re looking for a game to burn some time or just need an Elder Scrolls fix then I would say give it a go.

Infamous Second Son Review - Shows what open worlds are capable on PS4.

By Sam Coles:

Infamous Second Son is a game that I’ve been a bit hesitant with buying because of the mixed reception with gamers, in one camp you have people saying that it’s the worst Infamous game and in the other people are saying it’s great so you can understand my cautious nature. So what do I think? Well…. I’m in the middle I think it’s good but not great by any stretch.

In Infamous Second Son you play as Delsin Rowe who is a young anarchist who goes around causing trouble by doing graffiti for the most part who also has an older brother who happens to be a police officer. On their travels after his old brother catches him as he’s doing his thing they stumble upon a prison transport with not your usual convicts, these convicts have super powers and are called Conduits. Delsin gets into an altercation with one of them and finds out that he can absorb their powers, Delsin thinks that this is fantastic but however does not know the repercussions of being a Conduit. Delsin’s older brother explains that Conduits are branded as “Bio terrorist” so he must hide his power or find a cure for him. So you then set out for Seattle looking for a cure and take down the leader of the DUP and gain more powers in the process.

The story isn’t inspiring by any means but it does its job to keep you motivated to push you through it as the game is well voice acted coupled with fantastic facial animation and sometimes funny quips in the dialogue.

The gameplay in this game is a super hero type sandbox game and what I mean by this is that you traverse the city by non-traditional means by gliding with your neon powers or running up walls, which is great fun once you get a rhythm of gliding and running up walls to then get into combat. You have a selection from four power types that you gradually get through game Smoke, Neon, Video and Concrete. Here is a breakdown on the powers:

Smoke:

Smoke has attacks if you didn’t guess it already around smoke and some fire based attacks, so you’ll be able to shoot fireballs out of your and turn into smoke to dodge or go through air vents. You can draw more energy from smoking chimes or burnt out cars.

Neon:

Probably the most visually intense of the powers as it is colourful and bright. This allows you to shoot neon lasers out of your hands as well as the ability to run up walls in a stream of bright purply pink stream as you dodge enemy gun fire.

Video:

This one is a very bizarre one because Infamous has always been about elements when it came down to powers and the last time I checked video isn’t an element but none less it doesn’t mean that this power is not cool. You have the ability to fly for a short amount of time with the digital wings you can spawn when you press circle. You have a rapid fire primary attack that is very effective against ground troops coupled with a homing attack that shoots swords.

Concrete:

This is the last power that you gain and it’s probably the most powerful ability you get with its rock dash which makes you invulnerable to all incoming attacks for a short while and you can also smash cars out of the way with it. You also get a three burst shooting attack for taking down enemies and of course an attack that shoots four massive rocks out at the same time to take down tougher and bigger soldiers.

Graphics are beautiful especially during the night time segments when it’s raining, seeing the bright neon signs reflect off the puddles as you see each rain drop hit the ground. The visual effects on the powers are bright and colourful which really helps differentiate each power so none look the same. The facial animation as I discussed briefly above is top notch and as it should as it’s the new generation of consoles really capturing the emotion of each character as they’re locked in conversation.

Now the negatives that I have is that the sandbox in my opinion is really, really small which would have been fine for the 7^th or 6^th generation, but not in the 8^th generation. Another thing that I had trouble with as the bizarre dimming effect with the powers every time I used a power and it makes the game seem very dark even when I turned the brightness up it just annoys me. The final negative is that the game is far too short, just when I was really getting into the campaign it was over and I know you’re meant to play it twice, but I’m not going to play it twice because some characters may have different hats on or jackets with no major difference in story.

Overall though Infamous Second Son isn’t a bad game, but it does fall short with its open world and campaign length, but if you have a PS4 I would say pick this up as it’s fairly cheap now and is a blast with gameplay.