Journey Review - Quite the journey indeed.

By Sam Coles:

There are some games that don’t come along often that define the medium as a piece of art, that can be relaxing and sombre at the same time. Journey is a game that I have been meaning to play for years, and I finally got my chance to play through it recently due to it being free to download (at time of writing) and I have to say it is one of the most beautiful games I have ever played! Originally released on the PlayStation 3 in 2012, Journey is just that a journey where one must find themselves. So is it good? Well I think you know the answer to that, let’s get into it.

Journey’s story is vague purposefully vague, but that is the great aspect about the game’s narrative that it is up to the player to make their own conclusion of the story. The basic premise that you are trying to find yourself and restore balance in the world; you travel beautiful yet ruined deserts with nothing but you gliding the sands. By the end of the narrative what we have is something that is emotional and beautiful, something I haven’t experience in a while and in other lights I would find it rather pretentious but not this game.

Journey is a puzzle platformer which has elements of co-op play, however at first it is not obvious with the co-op play as the other players feel like they are part of the world and fit in and don’t standout. It’s this level of immersion that elevates Journey on a different level, where it never breaks and keeps you sucked in through the fantastic yet short adventure. The gameplay is minimal but that is not a bad thing, you can jump and glide to help you get to elevated platforms. However you can only glide when you collect certain items in each level, so you have to be somewhat tactful when using it. It’s not a particularly hard game as it is rather linear and straight forward, but it doesn’t make it completely obvious as it gives you subtle visual ques of where you are supposed to go as well as what to do.

There is online co-op in the game, but it is not presented in a traditional manner as you can’t just invite people to help you out. How this works is that it is like the title describes, a journey. Where you meet strangers on the way, where you are unsure if they are friend or foe as they hint at you to follow them. It’s this dynamic multiplayer system that works in the game’s context of the narrative, because in real life we are weary of strangers and having to gauge that trust with someone who you don’t even know let alone their name makes the game tense in a way. What is great about this is that at the end of the game you get a list of gamer tags of the people that helped you out, almost encouraging you to send them a message of thanks. It’s rather heart-warming when you think about it.

The presentation and soundtrack are absolutely superb, considering this was initially a 2012 release on the PS3 it looks miles above anything on that hardware. The baron deserts look wonderful, coupled with the sun turning into a pleasant orange glow the further you progress. It’s not all desert as you encounter a mountainous region, frost laden and peppered with snow with an ominous soundtrack as you traverse the tundra. The soundtrack composed by Austin Wintory is excellent; it can range from relaxing, emotional and even scary in parts as you go through the more precarious areas.

Were there any issues with the game? Not particularly although there was one slight niggle that got to me towards the end of the game. The game crashed just as I was at the end of the game, where I had to start that level all over again however that happened once throughout my entire experience.

Journey is just that, a journey that we all must embark on at least once in our lives. It this combination of art, video game and an experience that make for a totally fresh and unique take on the interactive medium, which I highly recommend. At the time of writing this game is free to download on the PS4 until the 6^th of May, so grab it while you can.

Persona 5: Royal - My thoughts so far!

By Sam Coles:

You know it’s odd how my video game tastes have evolved since I have gotten older as well as becoming a writer within industry, if you were to tell me to play a game like Persona seven years ago I would have laughed and chugged down a pint of beer and played Call of Duty. Now that I’m older and more open when it comes to art I’m willing to try out different games, so to my surprise Persona 5 is rather good and excellent dare I say it. I just want to give my first impressions, so this is not a full review as I understand this game to be a really long game so I can’t really give a proper review. I’m going to summarise my experience of the first 10 hours of the game.

Let’s start off with the story of Persona 5, at first it starts off normal enough (well in terms of J-RPG standards), where you are making daring escape as the main character Joker with an upbeat and jazzy soundtrack (which I will get into later). Where you have oddball characters, somewhat ham fisted dialogue and a slow introduction with the combat. So far pretty standard stuff for a J-RPG, but then things take a dark turn with certain subject matters.

There were many elements that I was not expecting with this game’s narrative, subjects such as domestic abuse, teachers taking advantage of vulnerable students and suicide. It’s something I was not expecting, as you have a talking cat in your party it almost gives Hideo Kojima a run for his money in terms of tone, but bizarrely it works really well. It’s an interesting concept of everyone’s inner thoughts or Persona, have their own alternate reality which makes for a unique narrative. The bright presentation is very deceptive of its overall tone.

Now let’s talk gameplay and it is pretty interesting, it’s your standard turn based combat you expect from a J-RPG. However unlike other games in the genre it’s fast and doesn’t feel like you are waiting forever, it’s not easy by any means but it is easily accessible to people who have never played games like these. It is easy to grasp but somewhat hard to master, as you have to make decisions that sometimes involve not killing your foes let me explain. Within a few hours of the game you are taught more combat tactics and one of these is hold up, what this entails is that you can hold up enemies if you stun them and what you can do is either rob them of money or items, ask for information, steal their power for your own or just flat murder them in a cold blooded fashion. It adds a new layer of depth and bits of morality, as it is more than just “kill the bad guy”.

Moving on from the standard attacks you have the titular Persona summons, these are tied to each character and stem from their inner personality such as Skull who has a Pirate who manifests within him and causes absolute devastation. However the main character code named “Joker” can use multiple Personas, which make these attacks and summons thematically appropriate to the game. They aren’t just there for the sake of it, they tie into the narrative which is great!

The presentation and music of this game is what immediately stands out, as soon as you boot the game up you are presented with a beautifully animated introduction with some of the funkiest music I have heard in a video game. The visuals obviously take ques from Anime, and the cutscenes are well done coupled with the English dub that is actually good for once in this sort of game. The music is a mix of funk and orchestral, which make for a good time throughout where I found myself bopping my head up and down with the beat. The music overall is a big thumbs up and I recommend looking up the soundtrack, even if you haven’t played the game.

Overall my time with Persona 5 so far has been excellent, it manages to balance a goofy and dark tone without it being jarring which is something I can appreciate. Not only that the combat is easy to grasp, but it is not easy as some of the enemy encounters can be tough. Plus the excellent presentation coupled with the funky soundtrack, which had me dancing in my seat made for an amazing experience so far. I can’t wait to play more!  

Resident Evil 3 (2020) Review - "You want S.T.A.R.S? I'll give you S.T.A.R.S"!

By Sam Coles:

Since 2017 with the release of Resident Evil 7, Capcom have been on a bit of a comeback with the Resident Evil series. They went back to the drawing board and realised that fans adore the survival horror genre, after 2019’s Resident Evil 2 Remake I wasn’t expecting a remake of the third game, but here we are just over a year later. Is this is as good as the Resident Evil 2 Remake? No, but it is still really good nonetheless, as it still captures the spirit of the original with tight controls and beautiful visuals. Let’s get into it!

Resident Evil 3 takes place before and after the events of Resident Evil 2, where we step into the tank top of Jill Valentine who is having PTSD dreams about turning into a zombie in her apartment. She wakes up in a cold sweat with a huge bait and switch as it starts off in first person, until Nemesis breaks through Jill’s wall. She finds out that the infection from the mansion has spread to the streets of Racoon City. Jill slowly uncovers the reason why the monster known as Nemesis is stalking her, she finds out that the Umbrella Corporation wants to snuff out the members of S.T.A.R.S as they uncovered the experiments they were working on. The story is actually rather engaging which is saying a lot for a Resident Evil game, the voice acting is well done where it has weight, but that is not to say there are no hammy moments from certain characters.

Gameplay takes the foundations that were set by the Resident Evil 2 Remake, but puts more of an emphasis on combat like the original Resident Evil 3 did. There is a higher amount of zombies on screen at once, which is thematically appropriate given the game’s setting within the walls of Racoon City. Combat feels a bit faster compared to the RE2 Remake, where you now have a dodge move like in the original RE3, but like the original RE3 this dodge attack is rather temperamental and decides to work when it wants to. The hitboxes with the zombies is rather questionable when I was dodging them, because there were moments where I thought I had slipped past the zombie for them to suddenly to grab me and bite my neck like a burrito.

Gameplay is overall fun with the same satisfying feedback with the zombies when you fire a shotgun round into them, as their flesh melts as buckshot tears through their decaying skin. The emphasis on puzzle solving has been decreased in this game, as it focuses on the action more and of course the encounters with the hulking bio weapon that is Nemesis. These encounters are heart pounding and tense, he can suddenly crash through walls and the thunderous thumps as he sprints at you full tilt made my heart jump out of my throat.

However I feel like they have cut down on the Nemesis encounters in this game in terms of his humanoid form, there are only a handful of times that he shows up with his firearms and mutates quicker than he did in the original. Plus they have taken out the choice encounters with him from the original, where it was this high risk high reward scenario which would grant you weapon parts, but now they are gone. Not to say the encounters are bad by any means in this remake as it is a different interpretation, but I feel the element of choice has been streamlined a bit in this version of the game.

Once again Capcom have shown the capabilities of their RE Engine, where yet again they can balance both high fidelity visuals and performance (mostly). The game’s use of photogrammetry makes the world look believable, coupled with the photorealistic looking character models that capture every detail and expression. From a subtle smirk, wink or raise of the eyebrows these are some of the best looking character models I have seen this generation. The gore effects are disgusting (in a good way) and for a lack of better words moist, the decaying flesh on the zombies and monsters have unflinching amount of detail although a bit downgraded from the 2 remake as there are more monsters and zombies on screen.

Overall I have nothing bad to say about the visuals, but performance is a different story as it tries to run at 60 frames per second but it stutters during certain gameplay segments and cutscenes. Now I was playing this on a base PS4 but I expect it is a lot better on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, but it doesn’t make it any less distracting.

I really enjoyed my time with the Resident Evil 3 remake; it has sharp visuals coupled with great combat and a story that was rather engaging for what it was. However I feel they cut a few corners, specifically with some of the Nemesis encounters and the choices you make in the original game. Great game and worth your time, but if you are a fan of the original you may see certain things missing.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Campaign Remastered Review.

By Sam Coles:

Hard to think in three years (at time of writing) that the Call of Duty series will be two decades old, and like a tree you can cut the series in half and the evolution of the series like rings symbolising its age. So here we are in 2020 playing a remaster of Modern Warfare 2, which I’m in two minds where I’m thrilled to go through the campaign with beefed up visuals. On the other hand I am rather confused, as they have omitted the Spec Ops and Multiplayer as they are what made the game special. Anyway let’s take a look at the campaign remastered, and see if it is worth your time and money.

The story is the same as the original game; it takes place 5 years after the events of Call of Duty 4 where the world is once again plunged into chaos. After the joint efforts of the SAS and USMC to stop the ultra-nationalist Russian party led by Imran Zakhaev all is well, until one of his lieutenants Vladimir Makarov takes over and tries to start a third World War. Makarov starts a war between Russia and US, where the Russians end up invading American soil. General Shepard puts together Task Force 141, consisting of Soap Mactavish, Simon “Ghost” Riley, Gary “Roach” Sanderson and of course the man who embodies facial hair Captain John Price. The story holds up really well with its twists and turns, with excellent performances throughout from the cast. You really feel the weight of the situation throughout the battles, as well as Captain Price’s cynical outlook on things.

Gameplay has been mostly left unchanged from the original, although there have been some tweaks to the formula to give weight to the controls giving you a sense of presence throughout. You no longer feel like a floating camera on a stick, don’t get me wrong the gameplay is still fast and slick but the added weight makes it feel more grounded. The shooting is still tight, satisfying and responsive as you snap onto each enemy. Guns really pack a punch in this game, which is elevated by the enhanced sound design which I will get into during the presentation section. There are usual moments where you will take control of vehicles, turrets and unmanned drones these range from UAVs loaded with predator missiles, Jeeps miniguns as well as utilising mounted high calibre sniper rifles.

Presentation has been given a huge makeover; it stimulates your nostalgia senses as it looks like what you thought it looked like in 2009. The game has more detail in all departments from the gun models, character models, environments as well as subtle details added for immersion. For example during the Cliffhanger mission your player character will put on a set of protective goggles when the storm intensifies, it’s not needed but it makes sense thematically, and there are so many instances of these new subtle details throughout this remaster.

As I have said before sound design has been given a huge boost, not only that audio quality in general is much better. The problem in the old version of the game is that sound layering wasn’t the best, certain sounds would either be too quiet or too loud fortunately that is fixed in this remaster. Guns sound terrifying in this game in a good way, the shotguns shake my floorboards with my subwoofer and the LMGs have a thunderous chatter as you cut down legions of soldiers.

Now let’s address the elephant in the room, there is no multiplayer and now I have played this remaster I kind of feel like something is missing. As many issues I have with Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer with its problems and imbalances, I still had a lot of fun with it and formed many memories with it. That’s why I find the current asking price of £20 a bit steep, unless you want to do a Veteran run or get all of the trophies then you aren’t going to get much value out of it.

Overall I enjoyed my time revisiting this game campaign with a fresh coat of paint, but my question is why? Why did they just release it like this? It was fun, but I think I could not recommend it just yet at the current price, wait for a sale I would recommend.

Editorial | The Witcher 3 - The White Wolf's adventure 5 years later.

By Sam Coles:

The passage of time is one that is often a fast journey, what may have been a few minutes or days ago turn into a decade ago. Anyway monologue out of the way The Witcher 3 is slowly crawling its way to being 5 years old, and wow just writing that makes me confused where I have to keep checking my calendar to see what year it is. I want to take a look back at the game, and plus it gives me a good excuse to gush about the game again!

The lead up for The Witcher 3 was a rather long wait for me, I first got a taste of The White Wolf’s exploits when I first played The Witcher 2 on Xbox 360 and read The Last Wish in the summer of 2012. I was instantly in love with the series, where it took traditional fantasy tropes and turns it on its head. The characters were engaging and the political intrigue within its world was fascinating. After finishing The Witcher 2 multiple times I waited patiently for a sequel, fortunately I wouldn’t have to wait long as The Witcher 3 was first unveiled at E3 2013! From that point it was the main reason why I wanted an Xbox One or PS4, then a year later I got one but I had to wait until 2015 to play Geralt of Riva’s next adventure.

When 2015 finally arrived I found myself playing The Witcher 3 5 hours straight (yes really), what captivated me first was the story. The Witcher 2 had an issue with its story mostly stemming from performances, don’t get me wrong it was miles better than the first game as people spoke like…. people. However a lot of the performances were stilted including the White Wolf, but in The Witcher 3 everyone is fleshed out and the performances are excellent. The same voice actor reprises his role as Geralt of Riva, but he feels more comfortable in the role where Geralt feels more alive in this game. I felt like I cared for every character in story, especially the relationship between Yennefer and Geralt although a chemically imbalanced relationship they love each other nonetheless (in my playthrough). They are all fleshed and leaped from page to game effortlessly; it kept me invested throughout the 50 hour story.

Gameplay was where things took a huge leap from the second game in a good way; combat was improved greatly as The Witcher 2 felt a bit clunky as if it were a poor man’s Demons Souls. It had unfair hit detection where they could chip at your health even when they are not even hitting you, you had great advantages such as backstab damage but so did enemies. Combat was manageable with one enemy as it felt like it was designed like that in The Witcher 2, however the game would often throw groups of enemies at you and it felt like you were trying dodge attacks with your trousers pulled down and this was very noticeable on harder difficulties.

The Witcher 3 fixed everything with the combat, it felt more smooth and responsive, the animations look like they have been pulled straight out of the books with Geralt’s twists, turns and pirouettes. Combat was fair but still challenging especially on difficulties hard and above, no longer did enemies have an instant advantage over you when they were in groups but they could still overwhelm you if you got careless. Geralt’s signs were utilised more, as they added flavour and depth to battles as well as being more effective against certain types of foes you come across.

Exploration was expanded too as it is an open world now, The Witcher 2 wasn’t open world in the traditional sense, let me explain. The Witcher 2 was split up into four chapters (if you include the prologue), where the areas are open ended first you are in the town of Flotsam, then Vergen and then Loc Muinne. They are open ended, however you can’t just go off the beaten path and explore as it is rather linear in that regard. The Witcher 3 on the other hand went full open world, you could now explore the Northern Realms at your own pace.

Now when a franchise that isn’t an open world in its initial stages decides to go in that direction it often doesn’t work. The Witcher 3 made sense to go in this direction, as you are a travelling monster hunter across the land, so the jump to a sandbox made perfect sense. Each city, village and locale felt unique and looked exactly how I would imagine them being in the books. CDPR did a wonderful job fleshing out this open world, with crisp and beautiful visuals with awe inspiring sunsets as you see the sky turn crimson with its shepherd’s delight.

Not only that the quests and side quests added to the new layer of exploration, they were all memorable and the side quests weren’t shafted as filler content no CDPR treated them with the same importance as the main story. You could go off and explore, where you can take a side quest that involves as something as stupid as finding an old woman’s frying pan but they bother to include comedic jabs at this seemingly mundane and trivial task.

The Witcher 3 stands as a classic in the halls of video game history, it shows at the time you don’t need a big team to create something passionate and fun. It is the gold standard with game design, storytelling, exploration and visual fidelity. It is easily one of the best games of this generation and it’s hard to believe that 5 years down the line we are still talking about it. The adventures I have had with the Geralt of Riva are times not wasted, but time well spent.

Editorial | Sleeping Dogs: 8 years later and still beautiful.

By Sam Coles:

The Xbox 360 generation had a lot of games that were really great, but didn’t quite meet certain audiences. This could be a number of factors, such as marketing being more or less non-existent or in the case of Square Enix releasing Sleeping Dogs in the middle of the summer when people don’t really buy games. Anyway now you know what the topic of the article is, Sleeping Dogs is a game that got overlooked, not because it was bad far from it as it was an amazing open world game set within a virtual recreation of Hong Kong. It’s just a game that people overlooked, and I want to take about it nearly 8 years after its release.

First release on the Xbox 360 and PS3 in 2012 with a later remaster on Xbox One and PS4 in 2014, Sleeping Dogs had a bit of a rough development cycle. The game was originally conceived as a new instalment of the True Crime series with the subtitle Hong Kong; however Activision lost faith in the project due to the last game in the series New York not faring well with critics. It got put on the back burner where Square Enix picked up the project, where the title was changed to what we know today as Sleeping Dogs. I remember this game being one of my most anticipated games of 2012, the setting, the combat and the story looked dark and unique.

Sleeping Dogs takes place in Hong Kong where you play as Wei Shen, who is an undercover police officer infiltrating the Triads who he happens to know from his childhood which is the perfect cover. At first Wei is very uncomfortable with what he sees, as he watches people get brutally murdered and it conflicts with his morality of upholding the law. It’s an interesting setup with the story as he has to choose to uphold law or be a gangster, even when he goes home he as PTSD moments where has nightmares of past events which adds a layer to the story. Now like most open world games the tone does conflict with the gameplay, as Shen guns people down without flinching or kills them in brutal ways during hand to hand fights. However this is always the nature of open world games, because let’s face it they do have to be fun at the end of the day.

Gameplay wise one could be cynical and look at this and think of it being a standard GTA clone, but honestly the gameplay has more depth than GTA and dare I say it more fun. Let’s start off with the melee combat, which may come across as mimicking Batman combat, which it does. However it was a breath of fresh air, as the different martial art combos felt like a more brutal and grounded version of Yakuza’s combat. You have contextual finishers, which can range from slamming someone’s face into a table saw, pushing them into a junction box or to the more cartoonish of throwing their head into a set of speakers. It was over the top yet grounded, as the graphic violence help elevate the tension coupled with the intense voice acting when you brutalised someone.

The gunplay was no slouch either; it took the standard cover mechanics of the time from popular third person shooters such as Gears of War and added its own flare to it. You took cover and shot at people, but this being inspire from popular action films such as Hard Boiled you could leap from cover and it will go into slow motion which gave you an advantage in gunfights. It wasn’t flashy for the sake of cinematic aesthetics. You could pick off your enemies one by one, which showed the excruciating detail of bullets entering and exiting a thug’s skull.

Driving took a more arcade and less realistic approach as you could perform physics defying sideswipes, but also you could perform “air jacks”. What this entails is that you can leap from your current vehicle to another one, where you then proceed to throw the driver out into traffic. It’s slick, stylish and ties physics to a burning truck as it speeds off a cliff.

Moving on from gameplay the setting and presentation is another highlight of Sleeping Dogs, the city of Hong Kong to my knowledge hasn’t really been used in video games in terms of open world games. In 2012 it was a breath of fresh air after the countless games set in the US, the neon lit streets as the rain covered the roads was and still is beautiful even today. The rain effects and character models especially were ahead of their time, characters would get wet in the rain and water kicking up as you drove on the soaked streets looks amazing. You have to bear in mind that this game was running on very dated hardware at this point, and it was amazing how they managed to utilise and squeeze every bit of life out of the 360 and PS3.

They really nailed the authenticity of the culture of the city, especially with the dialogue throughout the story. During the excellently directed scenes the characters will mostly speak English but sometimes in mid-sentence will switch to Cantonese on the fly, this mostly happens when they decide to throw profanity at other characters but it adds a layer of believability nonetheless.

Overall Sleeping Dogs is an underappreciated gem and you should play it, as it captures the world of Hong Kong perfectly and has its own spin on the open world genre. It's a shame that we never got a sequel, but maybe one day. It’s widely available on the Xbox 360, PS3, PS4, Xbox One and PC! Go and give it a go!

Editorial | Why you should be excited for the Resident Evil 3 Remake.

By Sam Coles:

Capcom have been on a bit of a comeback for the past 3 years, after their somewhat bad streak since Resident Evil 6. Since 2017 Capcom went back to the drawing board and produced games that what made them great, we had a soft reboot of the Resident Evil series with 7^th entry, the resurgence of Mega Man, Devil May Cry returning with the white haired demon hunter and of course the remake of Resident Evil 2 in 2019. Now they are bringing back the somewhat underappreciated third mainline entry, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. I want to talk about the original game, and why you should be excited for the remake that is coming out in April of 2020.

Resident Evil 3 takes place on the streets of Raccoon City, where it both takes places before and after the events of Resident Evil 2. This time we step back into the boots of Jill Valentine, where she is sitting in her apartment when the viral outbreak happens where she has nothing more than her pistol and casual attire to help her get through the night. It’s not long until she discovers that she is being stalked by a B.O.W (Bio Organic Weapon) called Nemesis, who has been tasked to hunt down the remaining members of the S.T.A.R.S unit who were involved the Mansion incident of the first game. The story was actually more involved with this game, but that doesn’t help the dreadful voice acting that was still present in the series at this point.

The gameplay took the familiarity of Resident Evil 2, but it put more of an action spin on it as you were against all odds in the scenario presented to you. The zombie count on screen was turned up to eleven, while at the same time you were constantly stalked by the titular Nemesis as he could break through walls at any point of the game or just randomly turn up in alley ways or offices in the police station. There was more of an emphasises on fighting than running away in this game as you had more ammunition compared to the first two games, yeah sure the camera was still fixed and you had to managed your inventory but combat was put the forefront especially with the Nemesis encounters which will get into now.

Throughout the game you will be pitted against the terrifying hulk that is Nemesis, where it will give the option to either fight or flee. Most players at the start of the game will understandably flee, however if you choose to fight the high risk and reward situation is great as you will be given gun parts for high powered weapons. This incentivises for players to get their hands dirty and face what seems to be an opposing foe right off the bat, the rewards for doing so are worth the player’s time.

What helped was Jill’s increased movement speed and mobility, now this may sound like a trivial addition these days but the addition of a quick 180 turn made combat feel less of a chore plus made the Nemesis fights more bearable. Not only that she had an extra dodge ability so you could move out of the way of zombies, but it was a bit temperamental as it was eerily precise to execute.  

You would think that the ramp up to action would sacrifice genuine scares; you would be wrong as you have this overhanging anxiety of when Nemesis is going to burst through the wall. There are moments where all you can hear are your footsteps, and then you hear the hulking the monster mutter “Stars” and he suddenly comes crashing through a wall. You then have this sudden panic wondering how the controls work as you struggle to fight or run away, and it is glorious as the tension goes through the roof.

Resident Evil 3 is a game that was a different take on the series, and it makes me very excited about the upcoming remakes with how they are going to take the current gameplay methods and amplify them. If you can I would recommend playing the original Resident Evil 3 before hopping into the new game, as it will give you a better outlook of the remake when it arrives in April.