FPS/Shooter

Thoughts on the Destiny Beta

I haven’t followed Destiny very closely at all, so when I started the beta I was pretty much going in blind. I do remember being excited about what I saw at the last E3, but now the hype has kicked into overdrive and September 9th can’t come soon enough.

I’m not entirely sure how you would classify Destiny as a game. Destiny is obviously a first-person shooter first and foremost, but the game is also heavily invested in several different kinds of online components. Destiny is not a MMOFPS, or at least I wouldn’t consider it one. Some people think that any game that has massive amounts of people playing online makes it an MMO but from my understanding it has always been about massive amounts of players actually playing together. You can’t really win here because there a lots of people on both sides who insist their definition is correct, but I’m getting a little off track here. Destiny is what I would consider a Persistent Online World, or I guess a POFPS. You can go to a social area and visit shops and so on and you are there with several other people but it seems pretty obvious that the area is instanced. When you are out doing story missions or just exploring there also seems to be a smaller smattering of players but that’s actually a good thing since a very crowded zone would pretty much ruin this kind of game.

So when I first started out I had to create a character. Of the three races and classes I went with Exo Hunter, which is pretty much a robot stalker-y type. Each character class gets their own set of abilities. I was able to throw a fire grenade and a throwing knife along with summoning a powerful fiery pistol as a sort of ultimate ability. I don’t know exactly what other classes can do but I’ve seen some interesting stuff like weird shield things and powerful ground-pound moves so I imagine it’s stuff like that. It actually reminds me a lot Borderlands in many ways but there seems to be a whole lot more depth here. I’m not entirely sure how their level system is going to work but it seems that pretty much every time you level up you get a new ability or passive. It doesn’t really look like a talent tree but each ability has a progress ring around them. How exactly you unlock these abilities is something I’m not too sure of. It might be straight progression based or maybe you need to do certain kinds of actions. (more…)

11 Comments
July 27, 2014
Console / FPS/Shooter

Wolfenstein: The New Order

I just finished the new Wolfenstein game a few minutes ago and figured I should write down some thoughts before I forget most of what happened. Not that it was necessarily a forgettable experience but I don’t always get to choose what information I retain. There were a lot of really cool parts to the game and overall I found it to be a pretty good for a FPS. I never actually played the original Wolfenstein so I imagine that all of the nostalgia and throwbacks are completely lost on someone like me. I should also mention that I played the Xbox One version, which supposedly looks the same as the PS4 game. Just throwing that out there.

wolfenstein-robot-dogPresentation, Story & Visuals, Etc.

The game begins with you on a plane that is under fire. You play as BJ Blazkowicz and are apart of a strike force that is raiding some Nazi-run location and trying to kill Deathshead, I think his name is. I wont go into any further spoilers other than to say that near the end of the first mission you are forced to make a decision that will put you in one of two timelines. So far I’ve only played through the game once so I don’t personally know how big a difference there is. I did search around and it seems that there is really only some minor changes and that the overall story is largely the same which really just makes it feel like a missed opportunity where they could have done something really interesting. (more…)

5 Comments
May 30, 2014
Console / FPS/Shooter / PC / Reviews

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare – The BEST shooter I’ve played in years

Plants-vs-zombies-garden-warfare

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare came out near the end of February with pretty much no hype or fanfare. I’m not entirely sure if it was really marketed at all. It was actually several weeks later that I noticed it had indeed come out, initially on Xbox One and 360 only, and that’s when I started paying attention. After watching several videos and streams I just knew it was something I would enjoy, and I was totally right.

The Basics

pvz-engineerThe game is a third-person shooter with the Plants vs. Zombies theme. Garden Warfare is essentially multiplayer only but you could play split-screen offline if you really wanted to. There are several modes including a horde-style defense mode where four plants defend their garden from waves of AI zombies, your regular TDM mode where you have to get 50 kills, Gardens & Graveyards where zombies are trying to push through 6-7 gardens to complete their objective while the Plants defend, and a newly added Gnome Bomb mode where each side has pickup the gnome and use it to blow up three objectives. Gardens & Graveyards is easily my favorite but I do enjoy all of the versus modes. The horde-style defense mode, the name of which escapes me right now, is one that I haven’t quite put a lot of time into. Mainly because it’s the kind of thing that requires good communication and a certain level of competency that I have yet to find. (more…)

7 Comments
March 28, 2014
Console / PC / Reviews

Thief Disappointment

I played the original Thief games when I was younger and since then they have been the standard that all other stealth games get measured by. When I heard that a new Thief game was being made I didn’t hold out a lot of hope that it would be as good as the originals, but it looked interesting enough to try anyway. I’m not very far in the game yet, only up to chapter 3, but I have several things that I wanted to talk about.

Garrett the ThiefDifficulty Customization

Originally, I decided to try playing the game as they had designed it. I picked the hardest difficulty and left every other setting at default. I got all the way up to chapter three before I could no longer take such a patronizing experience. For some reason it seems devs think modern gamers are incredibly inept at playing games and require giant waypoint arrows, visual meters that show the alert level of guards, and special vision modes that make everything intractable light up like a Christmas tree. Fortunately the game allows you to customize the difficulty options in an attempt to make the game feel like the originals. You can disable anywhere saving, the aiming reticle, the focus vision mode, etc. So after turning on essentially every limitation and disabling waypoint arrows, and pretty much everything else, I started over. Unfortunately, there’s a lot that is still same about the game. Even though the focus vision mode is turned off you will still see climbable spots glowing with an offensive blue tint and even though the reticle is turned off objects will still highlight when you aim at them, which essentially is the same thing. (more…)

5 Comments
March 9, 2014
Reviews

Tomb Raider: Fancy Hair Edition

Tomb-Raider-Definitive-EditionI recently picked up and beat Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for PS4. Having never played the original game I’m not entirely sure about the differences. Supposedly the graphics are much nicer and there are new skin lighting and hair physics or something like that. I don’t know the exact extent of all that was done but apparently it was enough to make it the “definitive” version of the game and it runs at 1080p and 60FPS. I don’t care so much about the 1080p part since my TV is only 720p but I guess the 60FPS is nice. Still, I find high frame rates to be a bit unnerving at times. Maybe it’s because I’m so used to playing PC games on my crappy computer and only getting like 15-20 FPS. I’ve never really been a frame snob like Keen.

So I figured I break down some of my favorite and least favorite aspects of the game.

+ The game play was actually pretty darn fun. It’s a third person shooter/action game that features a lot of environment traversal via jumping, climbing, rope sliding, and so on. The gun play felt nice and tight and I don’t have any real complaints in this regard.

+ You get a bow! Bows are cool! Every game should have a bow. Plus you can shoot rope arrows! Rope! On arrows! You’ll just have to trust in my enthusiasm. If you knew me then you might understand.

+ You can earn exp and purchase new abilities. Well, mostly passive abilities but still. You can get things that increase the salvage and exp you get or unlock abilities that make you a better killer. There are three different sections to choose from. Something like: Survival, Hunting, and… I’m blanking out. I think it’s weapon related. They aren’t really skill trees and you can pretty much choose anything you want to purchase aside from a few abilities which are linked, requiring a previous kill, and some abilities only unlock once you have purchased a certain number of skills.

+ Salvage can be used to upgrade your weapons, which is pretty awesome. You can increase stuff like damage, handling, and even add some new abilities to some like silencers, exploding arrows, fire shells, etc. Who doesn’t enjoy upgrading stuff? I wouldn’t care to know them!

+ The weapons are pretty cool. Aside from the bow you get an assault rifle, a pistol, and a shotgun. As you upgrade them more and more you eventually get better versions of each. You also get a swanky climbing ax used for, well, climbing but you can also bury it into enemy skulls all sneaky like.

+ There are some optional tombs that you can raid (Oh, now I get it) which feature some pretty cool puzzles. I like puzzles and think all games should feature them. Why not, right? Keeps ya sharp!

+ There’s a lot of stuff to collect but fortunately it is made easier by some special glowy survival vision deal plus you can just find a map that shows the location of everything.

+ Fancy PS4 visuals plus it supposedly runs at 1080p 60FPS, if that’s your thing. (more…)

6 Comments
February 4, 2014
Console / Reviews

Dead Rising 3

Dead Rising 3

My time has been split between a lot of games lately, and I haven’t really written about much. I keep hopping between new stuff on PS4 and Xbone One while also finishing up some 360/ps3 and Wii U games. In the end it makes progress pretty slow, but I’ve finally played enough of Dead Rising 3 to write my thoughts.

General Info

I’ll give a brief explanation for those that might not be familiar with the games. Basically, there is a period of several days, something like five, and you have to survive a zombie infested area while completing various story missions. Optional side objectives will pop up now and then and you have a limited amount of time to complete them before they are gone for good. There are tons of objects littered around for you to bash zombies with or you can even combine items to make some rather sinister combo weapons. Depending on how well you do and what you can accomplish within the time limit you get a specific ending.

Dead Rising 3 MapThe game was immediately familiar since I had played the previous two games. At its core it seems to have maintained most of its original mechanics without screwing things up too much. The biggest change that I noticed is the ability to choose between a Story and Nightmare mode. The first gives you a generous amount of time to explore and complete goals and also autosaves your progress. Nightmare Mode is like previous Dead Rising games and the clock is constantly ticking fast so you have to make sure you complete objectives, explore, and rescue people within the time you have. I went with Nightmare Mode since I really liked the pace of the first two games and because I hate having a good time. (more…)

Comments Off on Dead Rising 3
December 15, 2013