Gaming Week 25: Dead or Alive 5 (PS3)
I apologise for this weeks review, I haven’t been able to concentrate and I feel it shines through in it’s coherency. Being in the middle of a desert doesn’t help with my concentration. Without further hindrance, here’s this weeks review: It’s hard to write about Dead or Alive 5 as a standalone product, I feel I have to compare it to previous games in the series, which is a shame in its own right. Dead or Alive 4 was a great launch product for the 360, which I enjoyed playing with friends and alone, but I don’t think DOA5 quite lives up to that name in its own merit. I’ll split this review up into segments to better portray my feelings. Combat: Combat has slightly changed from the previous games in the series, meaning it took me a while to adjust to the new control system in place for fighting. Character’s…
Gaming Week 24: Thirty Flights of Loving (PC)
Following on from last week I decided to play Thirty Flights of Loving, the sequel to Gravity Bone. This one was kickstarted as part of the Idle Thumbs podcast, and eventually was released to steam for download. It follows on from the themes and story outlined in Gravity Bone, and even has more depth than the first. You start Thirty Flights of Loving as an agent that must find his way into a secret hide out. A small poster on the wall explains the controls, and with this the game sets you on your way. Its once you set out on your mission is where you Now it may not be a coherent story, but its you that must do the job of making it one, constantly guessing whats coming next only for your presumptions to be turned upside down. Game mechanics are fairly straight forward, you no longer have…
Gaming Week 23: Gravity Bone (Mac & PC)
For this week, I decided to write about something that is renowned for being short, but shouldn’t be disregarded for being so. I’m technically on holiday for the next 3 months, and will definitely continue with my weekly gaming, but they may be smaller games. Hope you enjoy reading this, and I will update this blog more regularly on my game development progress. Gravity Bone: Gravity Bone is a small indie game made by Blendo Games, (A one man team consisting of Brendon Chung) and when I say short, I mean 20 minutes to an hour short. This isn’t detrimental to the game in any way, just be warned and don’t be surprised when it abruptly ends. In this short time, Brendon manages to create a narrative that would rival even the biggest of games, something that’s constantly got you questioning what’s going on and what’s the big picture. It’s certainly effective, playing from…
Gaming Week 22: Thomas Was Alone (PS Vita)
Note: I wasn’t going to write a full review for Thomas Was Alone due to a bunch of other games I’ve been playing, but I then realised that just because it’s an indie game, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t get treated the same as Triple-A budget games. Especially due to how much this game touched me and made me rethink my own ideas on platformers and characterisation. So here it is, a review on a relatively recent indie game, enjoy! Thomas Was Alone is a platformer stripped down to its core mechanics, a player moves a character across the screen trying to get from point A to B using different techniques. It’s not only stripped down to its core mechanics in gameplay, but also in graphics, with every character being simple geometric squares and rectangles which can move at different speeds and jump at different heights. Everything that I just said…
Gaming Week 21: Bayonetta (360)
Oh Bayonetta, I’ve been meaning to play you for years but never found the time to fit your into my schedule. I’ve owned you since you first was released onto the world, and my oh my how I was a fool to disregard you for so long. As you can probably tell from my little burst above, I enjoyed every minute of Bayonetta, and not just because of the main character. Everything from game play, to the style, to the music entranced me to my very core, making sure I constantly progressed until I had taken in all Bayonetta had to offer. So firstly: the game play. Bayonetta is a action game, if you’ve ever laid your hands on a Devil May Cry title in the past then you already know how this game will go, the difference you’ll find is the execution. In Devil May Cry games, or even…
Gaming Week 20: Dust, an Elysian Tale (XBLA)
Dust is a very unique game in its ability to portray very serious topics, whilst looking like something a kid would play with its art style. This isn’t a bad thing by any stretch, in fact it adds to Dust’s ability to get your pre-conceived notions and turn them on their head. So although this may look like a game about furries, overlook that and you’ll be transported into a very deep and troubling world where it’s realities aren’t too far from our own. You start Dust as a person (fox?) that’s just been caught by a tiny flying fox stealing a sword. Turns out that the sword talks, and explains that it can only be welded by it’s true owner, therefore it hasn’t been stollen. You’ll come to know these characters as Dust (your main protagonist and playable character) Fidget (the flying little fox that’s the swords guardian) and the blade…
Gaming Week 19: Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon (XBLA)
Far Cry 3 was a fantastic release last winter, combining a gorgeous open world with a solid story, it made for a very fun and addictive game. Fast forward 6 months and we have the release of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, a stand alone expansion that doesn’t require the original game to work. So the question is, what is Blood Dragon? The answer isn’t as straight forward as you may think. Blood Dragon is Far Cry 3, except, it technically isn’t. The main setting and plot for Blood Dragon centres around an alternate universe in which the world has undergone 2 apocalypses (I shit you not) and the 80’s are here to stay. At face value, this is basically a few reskins of the original Far Cry 3 whilst also messing things up for comedic value, but some of the changes really are hooking, and make for a unique…
Gaming Week 18: Antichamber (PC)
I’ve wanted to play Antichamber since I first ever laid eyes on it about 2 years ago. It looked so different, and so fantastically intelligent, that I just wanted to experience this new way of gaming. It doesn’t go so far as to invent any new ways of gaming, but intelligently pushes you to the limits, ensuring you poke and prod the game environment until you understand its rules, and as a result, feel empowered in this puzzle world. You start Antichamber in a black empty room, with no context as to where you are, and what to do. You spin your mouse around to discover you’re in first person view. From here you can then adjust the settings of your computer using a wall, and just clicking the elements you want to change. Its a pretty nifty way of doing things, and I feel it’s quite intelligent game design…
Gaming Week 17: Gears of War: Judgement (360)
(This review won’t touch multiplayer, just the main campaign.) Gears of War judgement starts as it means to go on: A mediocre GoW game that can’t quite reach the highs of the previous instalments. New ways of playing don’t help to make the game anymore immersive, and it all just ends up leaving a player deflated once finished. So the premise for GoW: Judgement is that it’s a prequel, based around Damon Baird, Augustus Cole, Sofia Hendrik and Garron Paduk, just months after emergence day. Baird and his band of merry men, are put on trial for activating a light mass bomb that could of been used for other purposes, and against orders not to. Most of the campaign missions follow Baird and his crew through recollections of what happened up to the point of activating the bomb, and slightly after. It’s quite a good story telling mechanic, and allows…
Gaming Week 16: Deadlight (PC)
Deadlight throws you into a realistic, post-apocalyptic world where a man can only move left and right. Joking aside, this is a truly realised world, where a simple platformer can have more depth and style then I’ve seen before (I shall overlook Limbo for now, although it is definitely in the same league.) Deadlight follows the story of Randell Wayne, a man who wakes up to all manner of chaos unfolding before him, at which point you have to take control of him and set off. During the course of the game, you’ll learn about Randells past, and his current relationship with other characters, ensuring that you’re clued up on what’s happening in this world. The main things you’ll be avoiding in this game are Zombies. These stupid, slow creatures feel slightly out of place in a platformer, but do allow for some interesting puzzle sequences (e.g. shouting for them…
Gaming Week 15: Borderlands 2 (360)
I’ll sum this up now: Borderlands 2 takes the successful formula of the first game, and goes to town, making sure it impresses and expands upon everything that made the first one such a runaway hit. If does nothing new to the formula, but certainly makes sure that you’re left satisfied, something that the 36 hours of gaming I’m endured can certainly ascertain to. If you’ve played Borderlands 1, then you know what you’re in for. Borderlands 2 encompasses a big open world full of objectives, and a whole lot of loot waiting for you to collect. The guns are ridiculous and over the top, but thats the whole point, and it’s fantastic. The sheer size of this game is enough to put anyone in awe, it truly is a big game. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the side objectives do have you running to places you’ve been…
Gaming Week 14: Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception (PS3)
Oh Nathan Drake, you careless adventurer you. How you made me not give a single damn in the first unchartered, then flipped my perception on its head in the 2nd is beyond my comprehension. So here we are with your third outing, and I must say, you’ve certainly impressed. The Uncharted series have been a mixed bag of highs and lows for myself. The first one, I was extremely unimpressed. I could see why people enjoyed it, but I felt like it was a poor mans Tomb Raider and was just a knock off. It was stunning in graphics, it wasn’t original in gameplay or story telling, it was just meh all the way through. This all changed with the second game. In Uncharted 2, Naughty Dog left me stunned at every turn. With improved art assets, and dynamically scripted sequences like the train level, (a level in which the…
Gaming Week 13: I am Alive (360)
I am Alive is the survival game from Ubisoft set in the future, after a catastrophic event has fallen mankind, and left only a few survivors on earth. A few people may remember the original trailer from 2008: If you count yourself as one of those people, then prepare to be disappointed, as Ubisoft changed majority of the formula from what they was showing in the original trailer, and instead made a fairly action orientated third person adventure game. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing mind you, but I think majority of the gaming community would agree that the original trailer showed a lot of promise and originality in an otherwise over-saturated market. The game centres around a unnamed protagonist who is searching for his wife and daughter in his hometown of Haventon, after a year of walking across the states to reach there. We are greeted with a view…
Gaming Week 12: VVVVVV (PC)
VVVVVV was my first foray into Terry Cavanagh’s (Creator of Super Hexagon) games, which in my opinion is a fantastic jumping point into the madness and simplicity he’s become famous for. Although this was made 3 years ago, I still think it’s a fantastic example of how graphics aren’t what makes a game, and how the mechanics of a game are what keeps it interesting. VVVVVV looks like a classic 8bit retro game, it’s not much to look at, but it gets the job done. It conveys a captain on his ship who suddenly has inter-dimensional problems and loses all of his crew. Thus begins an epic adventure to find his shipmates, and bring them back. (A note to those who may not know, VVVVVV is named after the names of the 6 crew members: Captain Viridian, Doctor Violet, Doctor Victoria, Officer Vermillion, Professor Vitellary and Chief Verdigris.) Controls are…
Gaming Week 11: God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP)
God of War has long held a special place in my heart. It was about 3 years ago that I decided to finally see what all the fuss was about, upon which I went out of my way to buy a PS3 off ebay. I bought the original so I could still play PS2 games, as I had never touched any GoW game (to the point I believed GoW stood for Gears of War). I always knew they were gory and violent, but looked on them as a DMC clone, how wrong I was. The first game took me about a week of on/off gaming to complete, the second took me 2 days, the third: 1 day. I became obsessed with the fantastic story and fiction, and the graphical improvements of each game kept me hooked. Unfortunately there wasn’t much more out there, and I haven’t touched a GoW game…