Assassin's Creed 3, 3DS, Total War Shogun 2

Short post today:

Here's the third episode of Gaming News of the Week, check it out if you've got a few minutes free!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvpSopvaf78&context=C41c3ef8ADvjVQa1PpcFMl0KRhfYw3MBgsDYa4DBpoJHtIpVCzSlI=

Thanks, have a good one

Steam Deals & Total War: Shogun 2

There have been some pretty sick deals on Steam this week. I picked up Total War: Shogun 2 for a mere £7.50, which is a bargain seeing as the game is barely a year old, and not only that, it was one of the better games of last year.

Total War: Shogun 2

I've played a good few hours so far, and am very much enjoying it. There's one niggling thing that annoys me about it though: I don't know anything about the setting. It makes me wish that the game was set in one of the other time periods the Total War franchise has visited, just with the mechanics from this one. I loved the Medieval, Rome, Empire and Napoleon games, and part of that was probably because those are some of my favourite periods from history. One historical setting I would like to see from the franchise is Alfred era Britain, close to the formation of England as a single country. That would be cool.

In Shogun however, it's feudal Japan, and you take on the responsibilities of one of the multiple clans in the country at that time and embark on your quest to become Shogun. In terms of strategy games in recent times, I've been playing Civilisation 5 and Crusader Kings 2, so it was kind of a shock to come back to the all out war scenario. The game lacks the depth of those other ones due to the fact that the campaign is basically kill or be killed, rather than being able to forge alliances and win through diplomatic or economic victory. But what it lacks there, it makes up for by making the war element so damned fun. 

What has always set the Total War series aside from other strategy games is the real time battle system. Shogun's is just as good as it's always been (it doesn't seem like they've changed it much), and although I don't know much about the setting, it's still pretty awesome to see samurai and the like battling against each other. 

Square Enix Weekend

Today (Saturday through Sunday), you can get 75% off all the Deus Ex games, which, like Shogun, is another steal. £7.50 for Human Revolution, which, while it wasn't as good as we were all hoping it to be after the precedent set by the original, was still one of the better games of last year, horrible boss battles aside. (Which the developer outright apologised for, which I thought was pretty funny)

Speaking of that original, it's £1.50. That's basically zero pounds, come on.

Looks like Thief, Lara Croft, Just Cause, Dungeon Siege, Kane and Lynch and Hitman will also be on sale over the next few days, so be sure to check out what's going on in the Steam store if any of those tickle your fancy.

Remember to check out my new video series, Gaming News of the Week on YouTube! 

Also I'm in the middle of writing a Trials Evolution preview, which I am hella excited about. So look for that over the next week or so.

Thanks for reading, have a good one

GNotW Episode 2

Hi, how's it going?

I've made a new video, it has more Mass Effect 3 news (yawn), Game, World of Warcraft, Minecraft and a bunch of games which I suck at playing. So something for everyone!

I've got more plans for this series, so stick with it as it's only going to get better and leave me some feedback if you want to see something changed.

You can click right here to get to YouTube, or watch the embedded video below. Hope you enjoy it!

Thanks for reading/ watching. Have a good weekend.

Gaming News of the Week

...and now for something completely different.

I decided to try my hand at video editing and speaking into a microphone, and then somehow combining those two things into an interesting (hopefully) weekly (hopefully) feature for your enjoyment!

It will be a run down of the gaming related news from the past seven days, as well as a few extra bits here and there such as me talking about the games I've been playing.

So, here it is! The first ever episode of Gaming News of the Week!

(I'll hopefully get the video embedded soon, it's not showing up on YouTube search results at the moment, which is the only way to do it on Blogspot)

EDIT: There we go.

Thanks for reading/ watching, have a good day!

My ME3 Ending. Is the outrage from fans justified?

Just finished my first (and probably sole) play through of Mass Effect 3. I'll tell you what happened, go through some of the key (but limited) differences in the other endings, and will muse about whether the massive amounts of outrage from fans of the series is warranted. So obviously, spoilers are coming. Don't read if you don't want to know.

My Ending
You are faced with two (or three, depending on certain factors) choices in the final moments of the game. You can destroy the Reapers, or control them (or combine synthetic life with organic life in what sounds like some unholy experiment gone wrong). I chose to control them, which I believe is the paragon ending, I think this is the case because it was blue, not red.

Depending on your galactic readiness rating, which is pretty much based on how many side missions you did, there are a few different ways each choice can pan out. In mine, Shepard dies, the reapers retreat, Earth is saved, the Mass Relays are all destroyed and the Normandy crash lands on some remote planet where Joker, Ashley and EDI emerge unscathed, which confused me as EDI was with me moments before on Earth, but anyway, the credits roll.

Then there's an utterly pointless cutscene after the credits, which suggests that an old man far in the future has been telling his grandchild all the events which have happened throughout the series. Why? What does this add to the ending?

The Outrage
Well, one thing the child says is "Tell me another Shepard story." Uh-oh, DLC on the way, thanks for making sure we all know, Bioware. Then there's just a straight up message saying, "hey, well done for beating the game, but remember to buy the DLC when it comes out!" Apparently, fans of the series didn't quite like that their hundreds of hours spent playing these games culminated in a ten minute cutscene and a message telling them to spend more money. Who knew?

By the way, I looked up what the other endings were after I finished. Turns out they're all the same. Sometimes the shockwave that ends the Reaper threat is red rather than blue though, so that's something. It's a little more varied, sometimes Earth is destroyed and the survival of the Normandy crew is in doubt, but you will have had to have played a pretty awful game to get to that situation. Fans are annoyed that over the course of the three games, they have spent hours shaping their character to be what they want them to be, only to then find out that no matter what choices you have made, you will always be faced with the same decision.

Plot Holes?
Regardless of your choices and actions, the Mass Relays are always destroyed. These are the only means of travelling the galaxy, so that's going to make it difficult for the millions upon millions of alien species which have congregated in Earth's solar system to help defeat the Reapers to leave. Also, I haven't read them, but I'm reliably informed that in some of the fiction, we are told that the destruction of a Mass Relay causes an explosion the same size as a supernova, destroying the solar system it's in. Looks like Shepard just found a way to decimate all forms of life in the galaxy much faster than the Reapers could ever do. Oops!


Speaking of the Reapers, we're told by their creator, why exactly they were created. Get ready now.


He created them billions of years ago, to stop synthetic beings rebelling against their creators and killing them.


So he created synthetic beings, which every now and then would kill all organic life, so that the organic life wouldn't create synthetic beings which would kill them. JackieChan.jpg

I won't go into more details, you can find much a more informative article here about why people are so angry about it.

Are fans right to be annoyed by the ending to Mass Effect 3? Maybe. Probably. But honestly, who cares? Not me. Bioware consistently make fantastic games that we all enjoy playing. Sure, the ending was a little weird, but I still had a good time with the game and would recommend that anyone who hasn't played the Mass Effect games to give them a look as soon as possible. They are quite simply, a collection of the best games of this generation. Anyone who thinks they have the right to demand that Bioware change the ending to one of their games because they didn't think it wrapped up the story quite perfectly is absolutely crazy.

Thanks for reading people, have a good one.

Demos and New Releases

I feel like I haven't done this in a while. My last post was a review of The Darkness II, which can be found here, or if for some reason you don't want to read the entire thing, there is an edited version on the Warwick University newspaper site because it was too long for them.

In other news, I wrote an Arma 3 Preview for Hooked Gamers, and I've just finished up an article about the Double Fine Kickstarter and the Humble Bundle Mojam which should be surfacing in one form or another pretty soon.

The even more exciting news is that we're finally getting to a run of decent new releases... here's what has been whetting my proverbial appetite recently.

SSX Demo


I normally don't play game demos (the auto dictionary thing is underlining 'demos', but I'm pretty sure that's the correct pluralisation... anyway), because it is generally what the developer wants you to see, i.e. the most polished part of the game which will allow them to take money out of your pockets more easily. However with sports games (extreme or otherwise) I can't imagine they are able to do that so well. There's a tutorial and a single level in the SSX demo, so I guess they could just make that really good, but regardless, I played a bit of it.

It's pretty fun! I played one of the old games like ten years ago and haven't really touched the series since, but EA definitely seem to have rejuvenated SSX back into something worth playing. Oh yeah, it's a snowboarding game, maybe I should've mentioned that earlier.


Everything looks real nice, some great lighting effects and the animations are really smooth. As I say, there's only one level, or "drop" as EA are calling them so there's not a great deal to comment on, but it's definitely enjoyable. You do tricks, grind rails and everything else you'd expect from a snowboarding/ skateboarding game. Performing these tricks build up your meter, which allows you to give yourself a speed boost, and eventually you enter "Tricky" mode, where you get infinite boost and can perform better tricks. Do well enough in Tricky mode and you will enter "Super Tricky" mode, where you can hit the shoulder buttons at the same time to pull of your rider's special signature move.

I'm gonna wait til some reviews come out to decide whether or not I'm going to buy it, but it is certainly interesting me. I believe it's out in the US tomorrow and we have to wait til the 2nd over here in the EU, so we'll see.


FIFA Street Demo


Another reason I don't usually play demos is because it's probably going to be a level from the game, meaning I'm then going to have to play that bit again if I eventually buy it. I like games 'n'all but I don't really want to spend a bunch of time doing something again and again.

 Contrary to that statement, I have been playing FIFA 12 again and again and again recently, so never mind, play demos if you want to.

The lack of new releases keeps me going back to the super addictive online Ultimate Team mode, so I'm excited to see what EA is going to do with a new football release. FIFA Street is all about your ball skills (teehee) as you get points for doing tricks, and it's not about how many goals you score but how you score them.

The demo is out on Wednesday for PS3 so I'll give that ago and probably get back to you about that.

Mass Effect 3


Haven't played the demo for ME3, are you surprised?

This is the big one then, the first huge release of the year, and hopefully it will live up to the hype, and the precedent set by the much loved previous games in the series. It's out on the 9th in the EU, so less than two weeks away!

What was with all this hate for EA/Bioware even before the game demo came out, you hadn't even played it by then! I remember back in the good old days of, oh I don't know, a year ago, when Bioware was untouchable... the shining God amongst video game developers, and now everyone's complaining because it put multiplayer into an RPG game and tried to add in some Kinect functionality? Just don't play it that way if it incenses you so much!

I'm not even the biggest fan of the series, although I quite enjoyed the second game and I'll be buying this one when it comes out, it's just a little confusing.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning


After some screw ups with Paypal, I finally got my hands on this game around two weeks after release, and have been playing bits and pieces of it since then.

It's kinda good, I was hoping it was going to be super revolutionary but it isn't really. The combat is quite fun, and different to a normal RPG, so it's nice to have that variety, but it's not engaging enough. And there are far too many quests... the majority are fairly well written, but I have found myself playing it more and more like how I used to level through WoW on alt characters. Go to a quest hub, pick up every quest I see, skip through the text, follow the markers on my map, kill/loot/escort whatever is there and repeat until everything is finished.

It's a shame because they did have some really nice ideas, and it's fairly fun to play for the most part, it just needed to be a bit more compelling.

That's it for now, Journey is coming out in a couple of weeks and I honestly can't wait for that, but I'll get more into that closer to the time.

Thanks for reading y'all, have a good one.

The Darkness II - Review

I actually wrote this about 5 days ago, and have been trying to get it published somewhere since then. It's going to be in The Boar (Warwick University Newspaper) next week, but some of it had to be cut as it was too long, so here's a sneaky peek at the unedited version:

The Darkness II - Review

Digital Extremes has taken over the reins of development for The Darkness II, the follow up to Starbreeze Studios' acclaimed 2007 original. After a delay of over six months, it was finally released at the beginning of February on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

The games follow the story of Jackie Estacado, who is inhabited by a malevolent being called The Darkness. This gives him unholy abilities, on top of two tentacle-like extra limbs, which can be used to melee and grab objects and enemies from afar. After surviving multiple mob hits in the first game, and being forced to watch his girlfriend, Jenny, die, Jackie went on a quest for revenge. The Darkness II takes place two years after the events of the first game, and in the meantime, Jackie himself has become the head of the Franchetti crime family, whilst trying to keep the evil Darkness under control. However, at the beginning of the game, Jackie is under attack once more, and must unleash the power of The Darkness again as only it has the power to prevent him from dying.

As the story unravels, you find that an ancient organisation called The Brotherhood are looking to gain the power of The Darkness. Giving up The Darkness seems an enticing prospect for Jackie, but the evil being reveals that Jenny's soul is trapped within it, and will be lost forever if Jackie does not fight back. And fight back you do, with great force. You have several categories of weapon to choose from, such as shotguns, rifles and pistols, with several types of gun within each, and you can dual wield one handed weapons. This is all standard fare, but what sets The Darkness II apart from other first person shooters are your Darkness abilities.

The right tentacle is used for swiping and slashing, and the left tentacle is used for grabbing. An enemy can't be grabbed unless they are dazed, either by being shot, or hit with the right tentacle. Once the left tentacle has someone in its grasp, a gruesome finishing move can be applied, and depending on your talent choices, you can gain health, ammo, or a shield which gives good protection from bullets. The left tentacle can also grasp objects such as lengths of pipe or fan blades, and can hurl them at enemies, causing yet more gory death. On top of the tentacles, you can also unlock some extra abilities, such as being able to channel The Darkness through your guns, which means you can fire without using any ammo and with increased damage. Early on, you get the ability to eat the hearts of deceased enemies to give you a health boost. Guts and gore are definitely high on the list of defining features of The Darkness II. Be wary though, as your Darkness powers can't be used in the light, so you are often shooting out bulbs, or avoiding enemies smart enough to carry large torches with them.

Also at your disposal is your little Darkling buddy, who is a figment of your imagination, but becomes a very real threat in the dark. He also provides a little comic relief, as he is a small, British-accented demon wearing a union jack shirt who delights in calling you 'Monkey' even though he looks like one himself. You control him at certain points during the game, but for the most part you're running around as Jackie killing everything that moves.

Right from the get go, the game has a rather frenetic pace, especially from an onlooker's point of view. The amount of action on screen at any one time can be a little overwhelming because of your four points of attack. Despite this, the controls are usually manageable, with one shoulder button being assigned to each limb on the consoles. The main complaint is that your tentacles rather obstruct your field of view, sometimes making it difficult to see exactly where the danger is coming from. Being in the light is also a massive hindrance, as it takes away your Darkness powers, while also partially blinding you. Once again, if you don't know exactly where the light source is, it's quite hard to escape and you are very vulnerable. When it's at its best though, The Darkness II is a delight to play, a fast paced shooter with great and exciting extra mechanics.

It's a nice thing to look at too, with some good cel-shaded visuals to give it more of a comic book feel, since the games stem from the comic book series. Although cartoony, the game does a good job of maintaining the dark, brooding atmosphere throughout, to the point that when you do go outside in the daytime for a fleeting moment later in the game, the amount of light and colour seems strange. Also adding to the atmosphere is the top notch voice acting on show, with Mike Patton of Faith No More fame returning from the first game to voice the Darkness, and Brian Bloom becoming the new voice talent for Jackie. Even the side characters are voiced really well, and the quality of writing helps you feel really involved in what's going on on screen. To break up the action, Jackie occasionally has hallucinations created by The Darkness to distract him from his goal of being reunited with Jenny. Many of these take place in an insane asylum, where Jackie is the patient, Jenny is a nurse, and members of The Brotherhood and his crime family are either doctors or fellow inmates. In fact, the game does a good job of nearly convincing you that maybe Jackie is a mental patient and is just imagining his other life after all. The Darkness II has a pretty compelling story, which will keep you powering through just to see what happens next.

The only problem is that the main story mode is on the short side. On normal difficulty it only took me between four and five hours. There is a new game plus mode, where you can replay the story again whilst keeping all of your talents you have accumulated, and there are plenty of achievements to go for, but the lack of length in the first place is a little disappointing.

The Darkness II does have a multiplayer mode to keep things going though, and it takes the form of a co-operative story campaign called Vendettas. You can play as one of four characters, each with their own limited selection of Darkness powers, and you play through some missions that are alluded to in the single player mode. It too is fairly short though, so if you want to bring some friends on a long multiplayer campaign, you may have to look elsewhere.

If you're looking for a quick burst of fun with some extreme violence and brutal murder thrown in, then The Darkness II is the game for you. A bit more work on the campaign and a more robust multiplayer mode and it could have become one of the better games in a slow start to the year for new releases. But as it is, it's an enjoyable, if short, experience that I would recommend to fans of shooters who are looking for something a little bit different.

Overall:

8.3/10