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Tag: PC

  • Gaming Week 6: FTL: Faster than Light (PC/Mac)

    Gaming Week 6: FTL: Faster than Light (PC/Mac)

    Having played FTL for over 15 hours, I’d say I’ve had my fill of this very charming and addictive game. I know the game can potentially be played a lot longer (I have some friends who have played it 40+ hours) but for me, I’ve completed it and will give myself a rest for a bit.

    “Now what is this FTL?” I hear you all cry, and I shall deliver. FTL is a top down space flight simulator where you have to manage all of the ship and it’s staff, in a way you could think of this as a theme hospital. You control each aspect of the ship, delivering power to each system as and when it’s needed. Fighting a pirate ship? Push power into the shields and weapons. Fighting on board your ship? Provide power to your medic bay to make sure your staff can be healed as soon as the fightings over. It’s all up to you, and the game encourages you to be adventurous in order to overcome a hoard of obstacles all at once.

    FIRE ALL THE TORPEDOES
    Firefights like these are very common, be prepared!

    The objective of the game is to get through 7 sectors to tell the alliance (which you are a part of) about the rebels plans. Sounds easy enough, but only once in my 15 hours of playing have I completed the game successfully. Each sector is randomised, and ensures that you don’t always have the easiest route, making you plot your course to the best of your ability. Within each sector, you have to jump to the end warp gate to get to the next sector, with each jump coming across an encounter. It’s in these encounters where the real adventure unfolds. You’re usually always given a choice of what to do in any given situation, so if your ship is in bad shape, skip attacking some pirates. It all comes down to a risk/reward scenario, with each risk being rewarded with scrap/missiles/drones. These are all useful for keeping the ship going, buying products at store, or upgrading the ship itself.

    I end up always fighting things
    Here is an encounter after just jumping. To be aggressive or passive, that’s the question.

    You will die in this game (be warned, it’s a perma-death), and at times it can feel very unfair. Encounters are semi-randomised, so you may end up in a situation where you only have 2 life bars left and the next warp drive you do puts you into the same territory as pirates. As much as this can take some getting used to (and infuriating at first) it ends up being a advantage in my opinion, as it means you rarely get the same gaming experience as other players. Each person has their own story about what went down, and that is a remarkable thing to have in any game of this generation.

    Pros:

    • Extremely re-playable
    • Brilliant strategy
    • Lovely 8-bit graphics

    Cons:

    • Randomisation can get a little too much and unfair
    • No end game in sight

    Overall I would have gladly made FTL one of my top 10 of games last year. It’s fun, got a little bit of charm, and a hell of a lot of strategy to make this an exciting (albeit short) experience.

    4/5

  • Gaming Week 3: Saints Row the Third

    This week I completed Saints the Third (after a year of owning it), and I must say, as much as the first half impressed me, the second half felt like a drag.

    I’m not saying it’s a bad game, not by any stretch. I just felt the originality run thin just past the half way point. The constant randomness, although refreshing and a laugh at times, goes on a bit too much, and ends up being boring rather then exciting.

    And to be honest, that’s all I have to say about the game. I’m glad I played it, I’ve played every other game so it was a must play, but I’m not gonna say much on how it plays due to there being loads of reviews out there.

    3/5

  • Gaming Week 1: The Walking Dead

    This week I played and finished The walking Dead Season 1, and I must say, I’m really glad I did. The game from start to finish made me question decisions and made me shriek with horror everytime I had to make one.

    Gameplay was slow and at times annoying, especially with a controller. To put it in perspective, your thumb controls the cursor on screen using the right analogue stick, yet that same thumb is meant to press the correlated button to make a action. It means at times you have to move your thumb between places (losing valuable time in quick decisions), which is never a good design choice for any genre of game. Gameplay being slow is to be expected though, especially when the concentration is on the characters and story rather than the action. At the end of the day, we should be grateful there’s action at all in a adventure game.

    Gameplay aside, the characters and story were immense, easily pushing the gameplay industry to the forefront of any art form of modern times. Characters were rich and full of emotion, each having their own traits, meaning some people I would love due to my own personality, and others I would hate. I can see how other players would love or hate depending on their own merits in life.

    Decisions really have weight, meaning that if you tell a character to go into a room before yourself, you could be sending that character to his/her grave. But it’s the way in which the walking dead pushes you into these decisions that really makes an impact. You just never know when you’re making a life choice for someone. Some choices can be trivial and pointless, others terrifying and game changing, but there’s no way to differentiate between which is which, meaning you’re constantly on edge, not wanting to progress.

    I can understand why so many publications have given it game of the year, and would happily suggest anyone give this game a play through. It’s about 10-12 hours in length, so there’s really no excuse to give it a go.

    4/5

  • Just a quick update

    Just thought I’d update the site about what’s currently being played, so here it goes:

    Bought Modnation Racers for the Playstation Vita as it was on sale in the PSN Store for only £11.99, so I’ll be posting my first thoughts about it soon this week. So far I really don’t know how I feel about it, so time will tell.

    Dragons Dogma was released on Friday (25th of May) and initially whilst I was serving all day it seemed to outsell Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Future Soldier, surprising and highly welcome. I can’t say sales will continue in this pattern, as knowing GAME they’ll stop stocking Dragons Dogma well before Ghost Recon, even when people still want it. (Exactly what happened with Kingdoms of Amular: Reckoning) I bought it on day of release, and so far I know I’ll love the game, but I can’t seem to get hooked. It’s definitely epic, I can feel that, but because of all of the training I so far feel distant from the action. A first thoughts and review will be up soon.

    Going to post a review for Pullblox soon, the lovable puzzle game for the Nintendo 3DS. I’m about half way through the game, and loving every minute.

    On my PC I’ve started to play Saints Row the Third seriously, for the last 4 hours of gameplay I’ve just been messing around, but I hope to have it finished soon and review to follow shortly after.

    This all might take me a while as I’ve got an interview for a management position, so time must be given to preparing.

    Either way I’ll keep this site updated with content over the coming weeks.