The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt - Elder Blood Trailer.

 

By Sam Coles:

During the weekend of the Playstation experience a new trailer for the latest Witcher game has surfaced explaining a tiny bit more of the new characters and dangers that you’ll be facing. By the look of this trailer this game may take place after Andrzej Sapkowski’s third book Time of Contempt because half way through the third book the ashen haired girl Ciri goes on the run from the Wild Hunt and joins a group of bandit elves. This game looks to be more and more impressive every time I see new gameplay for it and this game series enriches the lore that I love with the book series.

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt will be released on Xbox One, PS4 and PC on the 24^th of February 2015.

Metal Gear Solid - The Birth of Cinematic Gaming.

By Sam Coles:

Metal Gear Solid is a series that I absolutely adore I’m a huge fan and this was the game that really kicked off the cinematic story telling that we all know today with professional cinematography and extensive cutscenes with top notch voice acting.

Metal Gear Solid is actually the third game in Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear series except this time more people knew about it because it was on the Sony Playstation rather than the obscure Japanese home computer known as the MSX 2. It was renowned for pushing the Playstation’s hardware to its limit because it was the first game to render everything in 3D and it was the technical achievement.

The story of Metal Gear Solid is very gripping and complex and I would be here all week if I were to go in depth so I’ll try and give you a basic gist. You play as an agent code named “Solid Snake” and you’ve been tasked to take down a terrorist group who were former members of the next generation special forces called Fox Hound, but they have gone rouge and are demanding for a large cash some and are asking for the remains of Big Boss the legendary Soldier that Snake was cloned from. I would say spoilers but this game is over 15 years old you’ve had plenty of time to play it. If their demands aren’t met in 18 hours they’ll launch a nuke from the mobile tank known as Metal Gear Rex.

You’ll be facing a colourful selection of bosses within the Fox Hound unit you have Revolver Ocelot a master with his Colt Single Action Armies, Psycho Mantis an ex-Soviet Psychic who reads your every move, Vulcan Raven a Native American Shaman with a minigun, Sniper Wolf a seductive sniper that sometimes falls in love with her target and finally you have Liquid Snake Solid’s brother. Each of these bosses are unique and require different strategies to defeat them for example you have to plug your controller in the second port in order to beat Mantis so he can’t read your mind.

Gameplay takes an overhead viewpoint like the first two Metal Gear Games from the MSX 2 which stuck with the series until Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence. These days it does feel incredibly awkward to control, but at the time it gave you a sense of tension because you couldn’t see what was a head, yeah you had a first person view but you could move in that mode and yeah you have radar but it gets jammed easily which makes you very venerable.

When you start your mission you’ll have no weapons and barely any items you have 1 ration, cigarettes and a pair of binoculars you have secure all you weapons and equipment on site all you have are your fists. Even when you’re armed to the teeth you’ll always lose because when you get hit by a bullet it does major damage and when you start the game your health bar is the size of a tadpole. The way you increase your life bar is by defeating bosses and this doesn’t only increase your life bar it increase the amount of ammo, rations and grenades you can carry which becomes very useful in later stages of the game. You gain access to a vast array of weapons and gadgets such as your generic fire arms such as the Socom pistol, Famas to the cool gadgets like the thermal goggles and the remote control rocket launcher called the Nikita.

The things that have dated with this game are the visuals obviously because this game came out in 1998 and the controls can be a bit clunky and stiff when your moving snake around, it feels like he moves grid by grid.

Metal Gear Solid is a great game and if you’re looking to get ready for Metal Gear Solid V The Phantom Pain I would recommend playing this game. It’s really easy to find and it’s not too expensive you can find on the PS1, PS3 on the Metal Gear Solid Legacy Collection or on the PSN store. I would recommend getting the Legacy Collection.

  

Grand Theft Auto V gets pulled from Target Australia Shelves.

 

By Sam Coles:

A few days ago a petition on change.org appeared from feminists about Rockstar’s latest open world game Grand Theft Auto V and that it’s about violent acts against women and it’s the sole purpose of the game that you can abuse and kill women despite the fact that is not true it’s a sandbox game you can do whatever you want.

So in the petition they want to pull GTA V from Target store shelves and most people would laugh at this tell them go back under their rock and brush it off, but oh no! They’re serious you want to know how serious let’s say over 40,000 signatures worth of serious which absolutely boggles my mind how anyone could look at this and can keep a straight face. Unfortunately Target in Australia have taken the games down, but they said they will carry on stocking mature rated games and film in their store which is so hypocritical that it aggravates me.

The weak sauce excuse that they put in this petition is that “It’s teaching little boys to beat up women” which is completely false because you can do whatever you want to in an open world game if you want to run over some with a car you can, if you want to grab a machine gun and go on a rampage you can or hell you grab a helicopter fly to the highest point and land on someone, but besides that this game is set in the criminal underworld the themes are going to be dark and gritty and as CEO of Take 2 said “it’s art but it’s gritty”. The main point of that statement that I want to talk about is this what does it say on the front and back of the box? It says that it is rated 18+ and is unsuitable for players under the age of 18 in Australia and here in the United Kingdom so it’s not the game developers fault that it gets into children’s hands it’s the parents so news flash parents this game is not for kids and don’t buy the game for them you wouldn’t buy them a 18+ film.

At the moment I just want to know what the hell is going on the industry from the Hatred game to the fact that your main protagonist isn’t female why is everyone suddenly analysing games like this I wish people could have fun in any industry and not the just gaming industry. This whole situation is becoming censorship because art has a right to be released despite opinion and if you don’t like ignore it or critique in a mature manner rather than just saying that it’s “shit”. I hope you change your mind Target Australia because this is absolutely ridiculous and is complete censorship get your act together and ignore this preposterous petition.

   

Are we paying for unfinished and broken games?

 

By Sam Coles:

 

With the latest slew of games having problems with their launches such as Assassin’s Creed Unity and Halo the Master Chief Collection, the question that I propose is that are we paying for unfinished products? Do the developers these days have a “fix it later” attitude towards development?

 

 

The problem that I have is that a lot of gamers don’t seem to have a problem because it will be fixed later and they have a go at critics because they analyse the game in its current state at launch. For example the latest game to have problems was Halo MCC and Gamespot gave it 6 out of 10 due to the fact that the multiplayer servers are not working properly. The community however did not like this because the campaigns are good and all that, but do not acknowledge the fact that the game is in an unpolished state even though they had a day one patch that was a massive 15GB.

 

 

It even becomes a problem after the launch of a game like the latest one to be hit by a game breaking bug was Alien Isolation on the PS4, I bought this game about a few weeks ago and when I put it in the system it did a usual patch for the game, this is expected. What is not expected is that there is certain mission where the game will crash and you can no longer progress in the game, and it was the patch that broke the game. Excuse for thinking in an old fashioned manner, but aren’t patches meant to fix games and not make them worse? Give them their due they did respond very quickly to their consumers and they are trying to roll out another patch to fix the problem, let’s hope it is soon because I’ve enjoyed of what I’ve played so far.

 

 

Now we have the big one from Ubisoft Assassin’s Creed Unity the game has been having frame rate problems across all three platforms although surprisingly it has been performing the best on the Xbox One, this is another unacceptable case especially when in some cases the frame rates drop down to 15FPS that is unplayable and it should not be happening in professional triple A gaming. According to fans of the series there is a very simple fix to the problem all you have to do is disconnect the game from the internet and it will start to play at a smooth frame rate, so what Ubisoft are making you do is play a singleplayer game online didn’t they not learn from Blizzard and Diablo III that you’ll still get latency issues even if you’re playing solo. When I’m playing a singleplayer game I don’t want to be connected to a server and have my character gliding along like he or she is on roller skates.

 

People say that we didn’t have the luxury of updates and patches and games were more glitched and buggy, but they were nowhere near as unfinished and unpolished states compared to more recent releases I get that the games are getting bigger and more complex to make, but if it’s not finished delay the game.

 

 

However this is not the first time in the gaming industry that this has happened let’s take a journey back to the early 80’s with the world of Atari. In 1983 the video game industry crashed due to lack of quality control because anyone with the know how could produce a game on the Atari 2600 and due to this there were a bloated amount of games and back then there weren’t really any reviews to go by because the video game journalist industry was non existent at that point. The only way you could find out that a game was good was word of mouth. The major game that caused the crash was the famous game E.T. but games like PAC-MAN for the 2600 was another game because it was ungodly mess and completely not finished with flickering ghosts and ear grating noises.

 

Although at the point of this published editorial the games are more stable than they were at release, but what I’m saying is that it is unacceptable to take a dump on your consumers by releasing a bug infested and unfinished mess that you like to call a video game. If you don’t want to lose you customers then give them the best product that you can deliver and if it doesn’t work delay for another six months.

 

The point I’m trying to put across in this short editorial is that don’t let another video game crash happen because if you keep up with this behaviour triple A publishers then you’ll run this industry into the ground and who knows maybe Nintendo will save it again.

Far Cry 4 Review - More like Far Cry 3.5.

By Sam Coles:

 

Far Cry 4 is so similar to Far Cry 3 that you could think that it is an expansion pack with better graphics, but it’s not the case on all of the aspects of the game what stands out with this game is the setting in the Himalayas.

 

The story to this game is that you play as Ajay Ghale who is coming back to his home country of Kyrat to fulfil his mother’s dying wish by spreading her ashes in the beautiful landscape of Kyrat. Unfortunately you get into an altercation with the local Royal Military which is under the command of the brutal dictator Pagan Min, right off the bat Pagan is a fantastic villain because unlike Vass who had habit acting like an animal who would straight up gut you if you pissed him off, Pagan plays it like a gentleman with his charming personality he can manipulate you with his words rather than brute force he comes across as charismatic which adds to his psychotic nature.

 

The visual presentation of this game is absolutely beautiful I played this on the PS4 and the visual aspect is nailed but to be honest you shouldn’t expect anything less from a Far Cry game they’re renowned for producing lush and vibrant environments. All of the subtle details help make this world feel alive such as the trees moving in the wind or the shake violently when an explosion happens, it looks organic with the individual blades of grass where you can hide with your bow and arrow or silenced sniper rifle and hunt your prey. You have many types of wildlife roaming the plains some are friendly and some are foe, it’s not the human residence you have to watch for the fauna will be hunting you to.

 

Gameplay wise it handles exactly like Far Cry 3 although it feels faster and tighter compared to its pre-equal you can do your slew of brutal stealth kills with you machete along with tight gunplay. Like the last game you have this huge open world to have fun in and you can unlock bits of the map by doing the usual Ubisoft gameplay mechanic of climbing a tower and watching a short animation of the new areas, which gets old really fast. You have many unlocks which you can obtain by hunting and take my advice before you start anything hunt for skins and craft bigger ammo belts and gun holsters because you only have one weapon slot to begin with and a pitiful amount of ammo. You have a skill tree which you can upgrade your health and different take down skills such as the awesome vehicle take down where you jump out of your car and boot out the driver of the other vehicle.

 

You have outposts that you can infiltrate like in Far Cry 3 which act as fast travel points once liberated, but it’s up to you how you want to tackle the outposts do you want to do it in a stealthy manner by using your bow, silenced sniper and machete, or do you go in like Rambo with rocket launchers and machine guns, or you can let the wildlife do the job for you by letting a tiger savagely kill your enemies. These outpost infiltrations are fun, but after a while it does get a bit monotonous because you end up following the same pattern to get it done quickly.

 

 

 

What’s new to the gameplay are subtle such as the ability to be able to shoot while you’re driving which I must say makes the game flow better because in previous games you had to stop your car, get your gun out and shoot and it did kill the flow in my opinion. You get new vehicles such as the gyrocopter which is very handy to cover the terrain in a quick amount of time and you also get to ride elephants…. Yes you read it correctly elephants and I must say that I feel like General Hannibal when I ride an elephant into battle knocking all of my enemies out of the way while fire my light machine gun at anything that moves, it makes you feel like a bad ass.

 

 

You have a vast array of weapons that you can buy, but to be honest if you’re like me and get most of the towers and out posts and do the side missions most of the weapons become free anyway so to be honest the monetary system is pretty much useless and ammo is always in constant supply, so I found that I rarely visited the trading posts because also you can craft your own medical syringes by picking green leaves.

 

 

Multiplayer is your standard team deathmatch and domination types, but you have two sides to pick you have the golden path soldiers and the Royal Armies hunters, which are a special unit that specialise in stealth and only use bows. This really adds tension if you’re on the other team because you are constantly watching you’re back because it has an atmosphere like predator.

 

The few nit-picks that I have with this game is that the animations take forever such as the healing animation is not good when you are in the middle of an intense fire fight, also the skinning animation and you’re main character getting grossed out gets old fast. You’re main character isn’t very interesting because unlike Jason Brody from Far Cry 3 Ajay doesn’t really have a decent character arc because in the first few minutes he’s just killing people with no questions asked, unlike Jason who first questions it and starts to enjoy it the further you go through the game. The radio DJ that you here when you liberate the towers gets boring because he spouts the same nonsense over and over again which make you stick to quad bikes and hang gliders to avoid the radio.

 

Overall I found that I really enjoyed Far Cry 4, is it Far Cry 3.5? Yeah a little bit but that’s not necessarily a bad thing because it fixes the minor problems from the last games and improves upon the framework. I would highly recommend this game if you want a long game to get you through Christmas despite the flaws.

Batman Arkham Knight Gameplay Trailer Ace Chemicals.

 

 

Trailer source:

MKIceAndFire 

 

 

By Sam Coles:

 

So it’s been a while since we’ve seen anything about the latest Batman game from Rocksteady Arkham Knight, the last time we saw anything substantial was E3 2014 which was an impressive demo.

 

We get a new gameplay trailer in the form of the “Ace Chemicals infiltration” which shows of Bat’s moves and skill set to take down the goons of Gotham city such as the standard slew of sneak attacks and brutal hand to hand combat which looks to be bone crushingly satisfying. Also we got to see the more action from the Batmobile which looks as if you can upgrade the vehicle with different gadgets to help you get a round.

Batman Arkham Knight releases on the 2^nd of June 2015 on PS4, Xbox One and PC.

Grand Theft Auto V PS4 Review - One Year Later in Los Santos

 

By Sam Coles:

 

One year later after the release of Grand Theft Auto V we get to take a trip back to Los Santos on the new and shiny Xbox One and PS4 I’ll be focusing on the PS4 version of the game and let’s say that the game is now packed with even more detail than before, not to say that the game wasn’t beautiful to begin with on the Xbox 360 and PS3.

 

So if you have been living under a rock or haven’t played it here is the basic gist of the story. You play as three characters Franklin who lives in the ghettos of Los Santos, Michael a retired bank robber and finally you have the amoral psychotic Trevor who takes lots of meth and is hell bent on making money through robbery. Michael ends up going back into bank robbing because he owes Mexican Cartel leader money after he pulls down his house with a truck.

 

 

 

The environments have been given an over hall and are densely populated compared to the last gen counterpart you’ll see more flora and fauna with elements such as there being separate blades of grass in the parks in the middle of the city to the long grass and flowers in the wilderness in the surrounding state of San Andreas. There is even added wildlife in the city such as cats and dogs wondering around these little added details make the world of  GTA V feel more alive than it already does.

 

 

 

So what else is new with the current gen version of the game besides a texture update, well you get more cars, guns and a new first person mode which you can play the entirety of the game in this first person mode. This really changes the dynamic of the game and you can witness Los Santos from a different perspective and makes you tackle missions with different strategies. Take note though that it is very difficult to drive in first person but you can change it to third person when you’re in a car and it will switch back when you get out of the car.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can now play with up to 30 players in one game on GTA Online but you may be met with some resistance with a full server which is understandable because of the sheer number in this massive open world. Unfortunately the multiplayer is still problematic and players are reporting that they couldn’t transfer their character which has been fixed and I can’t seem to find a full game, most of them seem to have fewer than 10 players each session that I’ve played.

 

Overall it’s the same game that you played last year with a shiny coat of paint, but it still has the same problematic multiplayer because I couldn’t get into a game with no more than 5-7 players, not the 30 player experience that I hoped for. Is it worth buying again if you played it last year? I would say no in my opinion but if you have a new gen console and you somehow missed the game then I would get this version as it is the definitive version.