Recent reviews by Freelancer

I know this game is a little on the older side but I finally got a chance to play it and I feel like it could have been one of the most underrated games in recent history. A lot of the features of this game are absolutely fantastic and judging my articles about the game the one gripe most people had was the combat (which honestly wasn't that bad). To get right into what this game is about, Remember Me is a 3rd person action game with combo based fighting mechanics and a parkour style level progression design. Essentially it is like many other climb, jump, crawl games like Tomb Raider, Uncharted and Enslaved but the main character instead of using projectile weapons only uses her fists and her power arm. Now the Combo system runs a little differently from other combo fighting games in that there are 4 primary "pressens" with 4 separate, and each more complicated, combos . However with these combos you can set any presser to each combo. The longer the combo the more xp you can get the more pressens you can unlock. There are 4 separate Pressens; Power which hits hard, Regen which heals you some each time you use it in a combo, Chain which increases a combo multiplier making it do more damage and get more xp (these are best used at the end of the a combo) and cool down which lowers the time required to use a S-Pressen.

S-Pressens are powerful, specialized pressens that you can only use once per certain time period and must have enough focus to use it. There are 5 S-Pressens which include Fury which lets Nilin (the main character) attack with each hit being more powerful than the last, Sensen Dos which stuns enemies and is very useful versus specific enemies, Rust in Pieces is a bomb that is effective versus robots, Camo which cloaks Nilin allowing her to move around regaining health and being able to perform a takedown on powerful enemies and logic bomb which can break shields and heavily damage enemies. Now the Specials and the basic combat system albeit are unique in their names and how they look, deep down it is just a generic combo based system and can get repetitive over time and can be prone to problems with connecting hits.

My biggest problem with the game however is the buggy parkour system. As it is a lot of times the camera control can be all over the place and Nilin could miss a jump that she should have been able to make. At times the parkour makes sense but other times it feels like it was just put there to have something for the time between fights and memory syncs.

One of the coolest features of this game however is the memory stealing/manipulating and as far as I'm concerned is not used enough in this game. Nilin's main ability (one of the main reasons she is such a sought after person) is that she can manipulate a characters memories of an event and completely change their personality of what happened during that event. During this mechanic you can go forward and backwards during a memory and slightly alter things in the room to make the characters do things including killing each other or remembering something to not be as tragic. It was used 3 or 4 times throughout the game but just the process of going into someone's mind and changing a memory to get a different outcome was absolutely facinating.

Enough about the gameplay, on to the story. The year is 2084 in Neo-Paris and Memorize corporation has invented a new implant called the Sensen which enables others to share memories with others, remove memories or even sell memories to earn money. During this time due to an infection and corruption of the implant, a new race of humans developed called Leapers. These Leapers are very basic in their mental capacity and are very aggressive towards non-Leapears. Enter our character Nilin who is a memory manipulator but in the beginning she has had almost all of her memories wiped because she had been captured by memorized and been punished. However thanks to someone called Edge, she is able to escape and work to find her memories and try to take down Memorize. Throughout the game Nilin has to manipulate the memories of many in order to get to the bottom of the whole situation of Memorize and the Sensen. The story is very unique and it is wonderful to have a main female protagonist that is the strongest character in the game.

The graphics of this game are absolutely beautiful and to top it all off, Dontnod Entertainment really did a top notch job of creating a very beautiful and realistic future Paris. The whole game is very aesthetically pleasing with the variations locations being so different showing the true difference between the impoverished and the wealthy in Neo-Paris. On top of that Olivier Deriviere did an absolutely fantastic job bringing the soundtrack to life to match the game beautifully. The music is much like the works done by Daft Punk in Tron Legacy in that Deriviere mixed a bit of electronic with orchestral sound. The end result is a soundtrack that I have ended up listening to repeatedly at work while I have been programming. The voice actors also do a fantastic job bringing their characters to life and make the dialogue all that much better.

Overall this game is absolutely fantastic, from the story, characters, music, graphics etc. The only downside is the generic gameplay and flawed camera angles during the parkour/climbing mechanics. I would highly recommend this game and I look forward to see if Capcon would bring us a sequel at some time in the future.

• Story - 95
• Gameplay - 70
• Graphics - 90
• Sound - 100
• Fun - 90
• Replay value - 80

Last year during Quakecon as part of my first experience with the press pass I got the privilege of playing an hour demo of Wolfenstein New Order and Elder Scrolls Online. Needless to say at the time I was more excited about getting a chance to look at Elder Scrolls than Wolfenstein but after I played both I was on board for The New Order. All I got to play was an hour, so the question was, would this game live up to Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Wolfenstein 3d while implementing some modern gaming mechanics likes a well written story, characters and setting? The answer to that is an emphatic Yes.

Wolfenstein The New Order is an old school shooter with newer shooter elements in it. The levels are set up with lots of big halls and corridors in a way to allow for lots of gun fights with enemies big and small. What New Order does a bit differently from its predecessors is that it added the element of stealth. There are lots of secret hallways and vents where you can sneak around enemies in order to stab them in the back. In fact I would say unless I felt pumped up to go guns blazing around (there are some levels that made me feel like that) I, for the most part, was sneaking around the entire time. Another one of the more modern elements of New Order would be that of their perk system. To get bonuses and abilities towards your weapon skills and other character stats, you can earn perks that you acquire through getting kills in a certain way (stealth throwing knives, shooting enemies out of cover, killing them with grenades or the LKV, etc.).

The big strong feature of this game is how Machine Games has created a great pacing throughout the game. You aren’t bombarded with enemies constantly and even at times being able to stealth and sneak around enemies is a great plus to that pacing. You are moving from event to event while building upon the story with each step. It doesn’t have the mindless spawning enemies that games like call of duty and the newer battlefields have. You fight only the units that are already there.

Now that isn’t to say there isn’t a downside to the mechanics of New Order, one of those being that the AI is pretty bad. At times you can sneak up right next to enemies and stab them without noticing. I’ve had times where be stabbing a Nazi near another Nazi would cause the other to react from his sound and then I’ve had other instances where they wouldn’t react at all. In fact at times it can be so bad that the game will help the AI out. If I’ve killed one of the enemies’ comrades in a stealth manner and have moved away, if that enemy finds his body he will immediately know where I am regardless of where I’m hiding. Another trait of the AI is if they know you are around the corner they won’t make any attempt to come after you. They will end up staying in their same patrol route and not move. I could see this as a problem as they will make no effort to flank you and try to make the game challenging.

Another problem with this game (and this might just be me), I was running on a pretty good machine, 2600k/780 ti/8 gigs of ram, and I had problems with this game at times. The framerate was fine at ultra and all but at random occurrences during either loading screens or cutscenes, or even sometimes gameplay itself but to a lesser extent, I would get a temporary freeze of the game. It wouldn’t freeze the computer but the game itself would just hang for about 10-20 seconds and then be back to normal. At times it kind of made it difficult to really get into the game as cutscenes would stop and you could lose your focus of what was going on. Now this didn’t happen all that often but it happened enough for me to notice it.

The game starts in 1946 and you are BJ Blazkowicz, the same character in all the previous Wolfenstein games, and you are heading towards General Deathshead’s, also a reoccurring character, compound in order to kill the General. As it is, the Nazis are winning the war due to some ancient technology that the Nazis are using that is making them far more advanced than the allies. In the end the assassination attempt fails and Blaszkowicz is hit in the head by some shrapnel while trying to escape and is put in a coma. During his coma he is put in a polish hospital where he meets Anya (love interest) and he stays there motionless for 14 years unaware of what is happening on the outside world. As it turns out the allies surrender in 1948 when Germany drops an atomic bomb on the US thus making the Nazis the winner of WWII. When Blazkowicz wakes up he finds himself in an unfamiliar 1960 with complete Nazi control. He must find the resistance and attempt to complete what he started by killing Deathshead if they ever want to be free of Nazi rule.

Wolfenstein New Order runs off of the id Tech 5 engine that the game Rage before it ran off of. As you would guess, this game is absolutely beautiful but not at the cost of being able to run it. The minimum specs that are on most pages is an i7 3770k and a 600 series nvidia or higher card but I’d be willing to bet that you could get away with a system a little weaker. But it isn’t just how the game looks, the aesthetics and the setting are amazing too. Machine Games took a sort of retro sci-fi feel with the world and it looks amazing. From a very militaristic feel of Berlin and London to a very high-tech feel of a German U-boat and the Moon. This game is very gorgeous and well made setting wise.

Machine games also did a fine job with the sound of the game. They didn’t have the voice actors use nothing but English like a lot of games tend to do. But instead they made sure to make it feel as real as possible as having many languages including German and Polish being spoken throughout the game. The music is top notch as well. Along with the symphonic soundtrack that occupancies you on various missions but they included 3 other tracks that illustrate how pop music would be if the Germans had won the war including a Nazi Beatles track called Ja Ja, Mund Mund.

Overall this game is a fantastic addition to the Wolfenstein franchise which frankly is a surprise as not much information was given about this game other than a few long trailers describing the Nazi rule of the world in the 1960’s. The pacing, story, characters, graphics, sound and gameplay are all fantastic but that doesn’t come without a few bugs and dumb AI. If you can look past those small problems you’ll really enjoy this old school shooter with new shooter features.

• Story - 95
• Gameplay – 80
• Graphics – 90
• Sound – 100
• Fun – 90
• Replay Value - 80

Republic Commando is a tactical first person shooter where you are the leader of a small squad called Delta Squad. The gameplay is much like any other shooter however instead of run and gun the player must order their squadmates to perform different functions such as slice a terminal, set a bomb and get behind cover and use various weapons including sniper, anti-armor and grenade. They will also target one enemy, form up on the player, go to a certain location or search and destroy. On top of that the player has a special weapon called the DC-17 which was interchangeable from assault rifle to sniper rifle to anti-armor launcher. The Player also had a full HUD that made it feel like the player was really in a clone trooper helmet.

One of the other cooler features is instead of dying you just go down and you can either call a squadmate over to revive you, maintain their orders and kill everything before getting you or just reload a save. A lot of these features worked perfectly it isn’t like whoever could develop the sequel couldn’t just use all these features all over again. It begs the question where is the sequel if the gameplay mechanics are already there and ready to be used again.

You are Delta RC-1138 or “Boss,” the leader of Delta squad who has in it RC-1262, “Scorch,” the comedic relief /explosives expert, RC-1140, “Fixer,” the by the book soldier that specializes in slicing and RC-1207, “Sev,” the hunter/sniper. You start out in your birthing tube on Kamino and it shows your training as you age. Eventually your squad meets up for the invasion of Geonosis during the beginning of the clone wars. There Delta Squad is tasked to infiltrate and assassinate Sun Fac, a Geonosian leader. Along with that they have several other objectives that they accomplish including destroying an underground droid factory and retrieving launch codes from a Trade Federation core ship.
One year after the invasion of Geonosis Delta Squad is set to investigate their original ship the Prosecutor to find out why it has not responded in several weeks. During this they find out the Trandoshan Slaves and Mercenaries have taken over the ship with the help of the Separatists in order to capture and bring the ship back to a Separatist base. Delta Squad ends up destroying all of the Trandoshans and defends the ship from a Trade Federation Battleship that attacks shortly after.

The final mission involves Delta Squad being the advance recon team on Kashyyyk and to help the Wookiees to fight back the Trandoshan Slavers and Separatists that have control of the planet. They end up rescuing General Tarfful and run into General Grievous themselves but only end up fighting those IG-100 Magna Guards that carry the Electrostaff. Eventually Delta Squad makes it to where the Separatist Battleship has linked itself the giant citadel tree and they destroy it. They end the game on a cliffhanger as Sev had been captured and the invasion of Kashyyyk by the main republic force had begun which once again begs the question, why not continue the story and have a sequel.

Now the graphics aren’t anything to write home about but they are fairly impressive for when this game was made, 2005, but what really makes this game look impressive is the HUD for the clone troopers and the art assets they created for the game. Lucasarts did not separate themselves from canon too much in that the story of Delta Squad lines up perfectly with that of the actual Star Wars universe and Extended Universe.
Republic Commando is actually the first Star Wars game that featured licensed music that included the song “Clones” by the band Ash which sounds awesome. On top of that they included all of the heavy battle music from John Williams you may have heard from any of the other Star Wars movies. The voice acting is also superb as for most of the clone troopers and Delta 38 was voiced by the original actor for Jango Fett, Temuera Morrison which I thought was a nice touch.

Overall this game is actually one of my favorite Star Wars games of all time and is an absolute classic in terms of story and gameplay. With the disbandment of Lucasarts, in order to make a sequel some developer is going to have to get rights to both the Star Wars IP and the Republic Commando IP which could make it quite pricey.
• Story - 4 out of 5
• Gameplay – 4 out of 5
• Graphics – 4 out of 5
• Sound - 5 out of 5
• Fun – 5 out of 5
Pros:
- Fun gameplay/squad commanding
- Great music and voice acting
- Star Wars Universe
Cons:
- Can get annoyingly difficult with the lack of ammo at times
- Repetitive enemies
I’m giving a Total score of 90%

I’m not going to talk too much about how the game actually plays or what it is because the narrative is what deserves the most praise. However I must get the standard blah blah blah out of the way so, Genre. This game is your standard Cover based 3rd person shooter. You run around place to place, in cover hopefully each time because you die too fast outside of cover, and kill the baddies. Who are the baddies you ask? Well we’ll get to that soon enough. You are allowed to carry 2 guns at a time plus 3 different grenades.
There are some pretty unique mechanics in this game that Yager Studios created more emphasis on in their E3 presentations than the actual story. Because the player is in Dubai there is lots of sand, Lots of it! During a lot of areas while fighting the enemy you’ll notice some areas that are structurally weak and have lots of sand behind it. Well lo and behold, you can shoot those objects out and sand comes pouring in killing all those around it. Another feature is that of extreme ammo conservation. There are very few bullets lying around so you’ll have to swap weapons often and make every shot count.

Now I feel like gameplay is very generic other than that but I’d like to think unintentionally this adds to the story greatly. Six Months before the game even starts Dubai gets hit by some of the worst dust storms in history. While some of the powerful elite evacuated, they didn’t tell the other citizens how bad it really got. After a little while the storms got much worse and these people were all stuck there. Colonel Konrad and his 33rd Battalion were ordered to assist in evacuations. After the storms got even worse the 33rd were ordered to abandon the citizens and evacuate themselves, they disobeyed. Because of the Storm wall the dust storms created, it limited any communications and hampered any air travel. Thus anyone in the city was essentially stuck there.
You play as Captain Walker who, after receiving a transmission 2 weeks earlier from Konrad about the failure of the evacuation, is sent in to investigate what happened and rescue any survivors. However what you find there is disturbing for delta squad, Walker’s 3 man unit. At the very beginning of the game you start out with a helicopter battle which ends up being a foreshadowing part of the game.


After that the game starts with Walker and Delta Squad walking into Dubai. They pass what can only be assumed was the convoy that was trying to get out of the city. When they come across a soldier that was shot up, they figure out something went very wrong with the evacuations. You come across insurgents that have held a member of the 33rd hostage. However the insurgents aren’t led by who you would think is leading them. Before starting this game or hearing anything about it I just assumed it was another lets fight terrorists in the desert game. I couldn’t have been any more wrong. Without spoiling too much the enemies you end up facing are that of your own, American Soldiers.

This whole game’s story follows a more modern version of Apocalypse Now and how war can affect the soldier. Many times throughout the game you realize that Walker is succumbing to PTSD and it helps the narrative immensely. This is where the bad gameplay comes into play. You don’t feel like a super soldier throughout the game, unlike many other games like COD or Battlefield, because they want you to feel how much war sucks. There is a small part in this game that makes Walker snap and I want to talk about it but I’m going to force a little scrolling order to. If you want to skip this spoiler search for #GRAPHICSANDSOUND otherwise keep scrolling.















Now there are going to be several pictures here as I can’t illustrate with words how well done this part was. White phosphorus is one of the painful weapons the US has ever used and when deployed can cause lots of burns and death. When used with mortars it can rain hellfire down on whoever is below and the deaths are painful. There is a part where a CIA agent tells you to go to “the gate,” however when you come to this point you see it riddled with soldiers. The only way to get to the gate is to use a white phosphorus mortar to kill the soldiers. After much debating on if it was right to use it or not Captain Walker decides to go do it. After this you end up walking through that which you destroyed.


Eventually you come to the end of the area and discovered that the reason the CIA agent wanted you to attack the gate was not to get to some area where all of the soldiers were but to rescue the civilians in the area. Well you just mortared that entire area and with it were the civilians. My personal belief was this was the turning point for Walker where his PTSD took over and he started going crazy. The thought of him kill all of those innocent men, women and children was just too much for his mind to handle. You could also see it in the eyes of his squad mates as they were slowly getting worse as well. This mission was no longer about rescuing people, this was about revenge.














#GRAPHICSANDSOUND
Now that that depressing bit is over how about the graphics and sound. Now I mentioned that this game’s story takes after Apocalypse Now so does the sound in a way. All of the music is based around the Vietnam era which the same can be said about that movie as well. On top of that the dialog and voice acting is top notch. This game is very pretty and seeing Dubai covered in sand from above in one of its many skyscrapers is really cool. Another nice feature is as the game moves along you can start to see it on Delta squad. They start to lose parts of their cloths and their bodies are beaten up and bloody.
Let’s just say this game is very good and if I could give more marks on my score to story I would. The gameplay, though very generic, can add to the story if you look at it as you aren’t a super soldier. The graphics and sound are also very nice and can really add to the environment of the game. I would like to add that once you finish the game you should definitely check out the tvtropes article about it. It is really long and has several items in it that I didn’t even think about the first time playing the game. Be warned though, you will probably lose at least a day reading that website.
• Story - 5 out of 5
• Gameplay – 3 out of 5
• Graphics – 5 out of 5
• Sound - 5 out of 5
• Fun – 5 out of 5
Total score of 4.6 out of 5. I would add more to the story making it about 7 out 5 or so but we’ll leave this as is. I highly recommend this game as it is one of the best narrative games to come out of gaming in more recent history.

Heroes of Might and Magic V is a turn based strategy game in a long series which started back in 1995 with Heroes of Might and Magic: A Strategic Quest and has been an extremely popular and successful strategy game for many years with the 6th game in the series coming out in October of 2011. As mentioned, HoMM V is a turn based strategy game where you control one hero for each army. The hero has 8 slots for 8 different units but they can have as many units as they would like under their command with that unique unit. The different units include classes such as archers, soldiers, cavalry, archangels and devils, ghosts, ghouls and many more. When your hero travels along the map they can pick up different relics and items that can increase attack, defense, luck, moral and other abilities and items that will help in a battle. They hero can only travel so far per day and after they are done they pass their turn on to the other opposing player whether that be AI or Human.
During their turn they can fight any enemies within their range which in turn starts a battle with a grid like system. These battles are also turn based and are based on the units speed not necessarily strict turn order. If an archer gets a lucky shot in they can get a boost and moral and actually go again either right after or sometime before their original turn order. Some units are faster than others; for example, griffins can go twice before the peasants even go once.

During the game the player can also take over cities, towns and keeps. The main city can be upgradable which allows you to build different units and upgrade others. Along with that the player can also higher other mercenary heroes that can have their own armies and travel around under the player’s control. Towns and keeps have certain units tied to them that each week replenish and can be bought by the heroes to add to their armies. In order to upgrade/build buildings and buy these units the player must capture strategic resources all along the map that include wood, ore, gems, mercury, sulfur, crystal and gold.

The story is a pretty simple one and spans across 6 different campaigns (the expansions add 2 more) which include Haven, Inferno, Necropolis, Dungeon, Sylvan and Academy. I only got through the first campaign as the game is very long but in this one Isabel the Queen is about to get married to King Nicolai when the demon invasion causes them to get separated and she is working towards getting back with the King while killing as many demons on the way as she can. She eventually finds him dying from some demonic spell that Agrael, a demon, attacks him with and is determined to get revenge against all demons and after which the dying king declares her ruler of the Holy Griffin Empire when he dies.

The graphics of the game are fairly basic and even for their time they weren’t anything special. In 2006 when we saw this game launch we saw other RTS and TBS games such as Empire at War, Company of Heroes and Warhammer 40k. So even if I was judging this by today’s standards it didn’t really even live up to the standards of 2006 when the game launched. Though there isn’t anything really wrong with the graphics, they just feel dated and not as impressive as other games of the time. There was one thing that kept bugging me about the game and that would be the camera. You couldn’t click on different items in the world without moving it around or if there was a fog of war it forced the unit to go all the way around or wouldn’t allow the unit to go forward at all.
The Sound was also equally bland and the music was very repetitive. The music didn’t so much get in the way or be annoying it just didn’t change very much. The voice acting wasn’t anything special but it wasn’t awful either. However the sound effects were unique for each unit so there is that. The biggest thing for me however was the setting the game was in. There are so many different areas and creatures in the game that it made for a very interesting adventure through the first campaign just getting to know this world.

Overall I can’t really compare this to any other game in the series as I haven’t played them however I have really enjoyed the gameplay of the game so much that it made me want to buy the 6th game in the series since I know the graphics have been vastly improved and look very impressive. I am giving the game a little boost in rating due to the limits of technology at the time however my 5 tiers are what the game rates to today’s standards.
• Story - 2 out of 5
• Gameplay – 5 out of 5
• Graphics – 2.5 out of 5
• Sound - 2 out of 5
• Fun – 5 out of 5
Pros:
- Great Turn based gameplay
- Can be Hard and rewarding
- A nice learning curve
- Interesting world and lore
Cons:
- Music/Sound are ok, nothing thrilling
- Story is ok however the world is great
- Irritating Camera

I’m giving a Total score of 74%

Borderlands 2, just like the first game, is a first person shooter with RPG elements. However Gearbox went out of their way to really put as much new content into the game as they could. In the first game each of the 4 different characters had only one tree of skills to select. In Borderlands 2 they have 3 trees and instead of 4 characters there are 5. I ended up playing as the Siren again like I did in the first so I will be reviewing from that character’s perspective. The Siren’s main skill, the phaselock (which is the ‘f’ key for all characters) is an ability that holds enemies in the air while you shoot at them. The skills she has vary from improving that main skill (health recharge by killing the phaselocked enemy, longer duration and even after you kill the enemy the phaselock goes to find another one), improves weapon elemental effects and the Siren’s overall health and shield. She also has several abilities that can improve the team you are with if you are playing co-op.
There are so many different kinds of guns it is ridiculous. I wasn’t even able to see maybe 1/1000th of the different weapons that are in this game. Each gun even can have its own special ability e.g. the weapon being thrown as a grenade when the player needs to reload, having a quicker or unique reload function and even guns that will talk. Like most RPGs these weapons come as massive amount of loot that enemies drop that vary in color depending on their rarity. I only reached level 36 by the end of the game so I only had 2 Orange weapons but they were both very good.

The story starts off with the player riding a train somewhere on Pandora in which Handsome Jack rigged to explode. Claptrap finds you and has you follow him to Sanctuary the main rebel city in the game. All this time Angel is trying to get you to stop Jack from force opening the vault in order to get the power from ‘The Warrior’ that is inside. For the most part you are doing various quests that follow the story and you end up meeting and helping out all the original vault hunters from the first game. But other than that the story is pretty straight forward and fairly simple. What really makes the story and side quests special is the dialogue and characters themselves.
Each NPC in the game feels like a legit character that gearbox took a lot of time creating a personality for. Every time claptrap speaks or someone makes fun of him I can’t help but laugh. Even Handsome Jack has a funny personality in a sick twisted sort of way. Without the characters Borderlands 2 would more than likely be a bland fetch quest RPG with no real attachment.



Now Borderlands 2 has its own style of graphics that sets it apart from many other games. It uses a cel shaded (it is spelled that way with one ‘l’) graphics that makes it very colorful and cartoonish feeling. All the different areas feel unique and awesome which is more than the first game can say. In Borderlands 1 the areas were all pretty much the same, dry desert with lots of rocks and caves. In Borderlands 2 that isn’t the case, there are many different settings for the different areas and they all feel different.
On top of that Gearbox did a fine job with the audio. As mentioned before the dialogue is outstanding and the voice acting is very well done. Because there are so many guns in this game they all need their own individual sound and Gearbox delivered on that one. Each different make and model have different sounds for the reloading, the shooting and when you have one of those special guns they even talk. Where the game shines due to the sound effects and voice actors it fails with the music. The music is just there in the background, is extremely quiet and doesn’t seem to ever really change. I was kind of disappointed because they had such a great trailer for the game mentioning 100% more “Wub Wub” but there was no such music in the game.


Overall this game was a great successor to an already great series however it didn’t improve a few things that the first game had problems with as well.
• Story - 3 out of 5
• Gameplay – 4 out of 5
• Graphics – 5 out of 5
• Sound - 4 out of 5
• Fun – 4 out of 5
Pros:
- LOOT LOOT LOOT
- Tons of fun to play by yourself or with your friends
- Extremely entertaining dialogue
Cons:
- Fetch quests that can get tiresome
- Music is very bland
- Story is kind of generic

I’m giving a Total score of 84%

Bioshock Infinite is the prequel to Bioshock and is centered around the floating city of Columbia. It is a first person shooter that allows the player to use both guns and what the game calls Vigors. You can only carry two guns at a time which include weapons like pistol, shotgun, machine gun, RPG launcher, minigun and many more. But where Bioshock has always shined is in the characters alternate abilities and in Bioshock Infinite these are the Vigors. These magic like powers allow the player to fire different types of abilities at the enemies, including Vigors such as Devil’s Kiss (A fireball throwing ability), Possession (allows the player to take control of a machine or human enemy for a brief period), Murder of Crows (the player can throw crows at enemies, stunning them) and several others.

Vigors in combat can mix things up allows it to never be the same. But where this game really shines is in the skyhook and Elizabeth’s tear ability. There is a rail system all around Columbia which if the player chooses can use it to ride around during combat and normal travel. At the same time you can launch yourself at enemies or shoot them from the skyrail itself. It makes combat fast paced and adds a much different element that most other shooters.
On top of that, there is Elizabeth’s tear ability. In Columbia there are tears in the space time that Elizabeth can open along your way which can help you in combat. She can pull different items into the current world you are in that include walls for cover, med kits, weapons, skyhooks that can help you get to higher locations and even other combat machines. You would think that you could abuse this during combat however, she can only open one tear at a time and the AI enemies can eliminate those advantages you get with the tears. Elizabeth will also walk around and find various items that can help you and throw them at you whenever you need them; Items including ammo if you are low, med kit or salts (that recharge your Vigor ‘mana’) and even money.


However, what makes this game beyond excellent and turns it into one of the most enjoyable games in recent history is the story and characters, I will try to spoil as little as I can. You are Booker Dewitt, a depressed combat vet of Wounded Knee who because of debt has to go to Columbia in the year 1912 to get back the girl, Elizabeth. During the trip, Dewitt discovers that he is what they call the false shepherd and is attacked almost immediately. He eventually finds his way to Elizabeth and together they escape both, what the people of Columbia call the prophet, Comstock and the Songbird (Elizabeth’s Guardian/Warden).

Elizabeth is one of the best written companions since Alyx Vance in Half-Life 2. Her [Elizabeth’s] personality is naïve however she knows the people of Columbia have been brainwashed and doesn’t understand why ‘The Prophet’ had her locked up all this time. Even with her naïve personality she is always trying to do what is right and is fearful of what she may have done while opening tears. Elizabeth really compliments Dewitt’s personality by being so different. Dewitt sees himself as not worth living on this world and doesn’t want Elizabeth to find out about his terrible past.
Columbia, the city itself, has a personality or culture that is better written than most other games’ characters. With the time of the Bioshock Infinite being 1912, Columbia reflects that of American history really well as it has all the social racism and segregation that went with the time period. Anyone that is not white isn’t worthy of being what they call the pure race. In fact, Irrational Studios even developed separated bathrooms and living areas. It is amazing how much detail they went into the city’s design. At the very beginning you are walking through a carnival, celebrating what I can only assume is July 4th since Dewitt says later in the game that it is July, and you come across what they call the raffle. You grab a baseball out of a basket with a number, when the announcer calls the number you are to throw the ball at a white and black couple or you can throw it at the announcer; this is actually where they discover who you are and neither would get hit by the ball.

Columbia also reminds me of a brainwashed state like that of North Korea. They see their leader as being a prophet that will bring them to heaven. Even after the first people Dewitt kills, on the radio you can hear them talk about “the dearly departed” in very positive light and that “God’s children” were unfortunately sent to heaven early. They have a somewhat religious fervor in regards to the founding fathers of America and see them as the greatest men that had ever lived. Christianity is huge in Columbia and they see Franklin, Jefferson and Washington as equals to Jesus.

Now, the controls for this game (PC controls) are like a basic shooter which includes using the mouse to look around and ‘wasd’ to move around. The uniqueness of this game is where the Vigors lie. To use a Vigor’s first basic attack you right click, to use the secondary attack the player would need to hold down the right mouse button. Instead of using the number keys to change weapons (you use ‘E’ for that), the number keys control your Vigors. This is where the PC really takes off from consoles in the controls scheme. You can quick change with the numbers where as on the console version you have to use the wheel selection to select a Vigor, slowing down combat a lot.
This game is absolutely beautiful, both artwork and graphic wise. This game took 5 years to make so I would expect a lot of art assets being developed for it, however the shear amount of detail that goes into this game is outstanding; the different areas that the player travels in, the different character designs, the propaganda posters and many other assets. Irrational did such an outstanding job making sure they put the most they could in this game and it definitely shows. There were even times where I forgot I was on a floating city and thought I was just walking around in a setting somewhere on earth but then I see the connections between different floating platforms, I realized again where I was.

The sound in this game is very well done. The voice acting, music and even the background effects sound amazing on even just a pair of basic speakers and even better on a headset with 5.1 or higher. I wanted to save two scenes of this game for the audio segment instead of putting it during the story segment because they wowed me in how well they changed the feeling of the game. The first is when Booker and Elizabeth are walking down into a basement of a building and a small child succumbed with fear runs under the staircase. Dewitt sees a guitar sitting on a chair and the player can choose to play it, what follows is an amazing change of pace to a very intense story. Dewitt starts playing and Elizabeth starts singing in order to ease the child. I know it is a small item in the game but it is the little things that make this game as great as it is.

Overall Bioshock Infinite is one of the best games I’ve played in recent years and is up there with my all time favorites which includes Mass Effect 2, Half-Life 2 and Bioshock. Is it better than the original? It is damn close and if it isn’t there is no reason why anyone would think this game isn’t sky high in how good it is.
• Story - 5 out of 5
• Gameplay – 5 out of 5
• Graphics – 5 out of 5
• Sound - 5 out of 5
• Fun – 5 out of 5

Batman Arkham Asylum, made by Rocksteady Studios and Squarenix, is a third person action-adventure game that allows you to play as Batman as he is thwarting the evil plans of Joker. Batman, like the comics, only comes equipped with his stealth, gadgets and fists. The combat system is mostly hand to hand but if an enemy ends up getting a weapon, for example a gun, the player must take out that enemy as fast as possible. The hand to hand combat system is fairly simple which involves combos, blocking and dodging. When you hit enemies you rack up a hit multiplier that allows you to do more and more complicated attacks and combos like hitting the direction keys and punching enemies across the room.

Like a lot of action adventure games, Batman has bosses that in order to beat them you must figure out the patterns of attack and what their weaknesses are without any help. This is nice to see that Batman doesn’t hand hold you throughout the entire game instructing you how to play. Even the mini bosses or larger enemies have specific weaknesses that you have to exploit in order to kill them. On top of the very fluid combat system the game has, the upgrade system is simple enough but allows for the feel of progression in the game. These upgrades include armor, special combos and even upgrades for some of his gadgets. Speaking of gadgets, batman has 5 primary gadgets and 3 additional variations of the batarang. Those gadgets include the batarang, a sort of exploding gel compound to destroy walls, the batclaw to pull items from ledges down, cryptographic sequencer which allows batman to hack security fields and the line launcher that allows him to get across large ravines.

In Arkham Asylum, Batman is transporting the Joker to Arkham Asylum and when Batman is suspicious of how easily the Joker let him get captured he decides to follow him in. Eventually he finds out his hunch is right and Harley Quinn takes control of the security systems and the Joker escapes. It was all an elaborate plan to kill Batman after taking control of the Asylum. Batman finds out later that the reason that the Joker wanted to come back to the asylum was to get a chemical compound called Titan and turn all of his men into super soldiers and to destroy Gotham. All during the game Batman runs into familiar enemies including Bane, Poison Ivy, Zasaz, Killer Croc, The Riddler and even Scarecrow. Extremely nostalgic for anyone that loved to watch the TV cartoon and read the comics.

The graphics are very impressive even for a game that was made in 2009 and in a lot of ways was limited by the consoles at the time. The textures are all smooth and the details in the characters are very impressive. Along with that they kept to the design of Arkham Asylum from the comics and the cartoon pretty well and a lot of the characters also have the likeness to that of the comics. For all intensive purposes this game models after the comics and cartoon more than the more recent Nolan films.
The music is kind of non-existent but that is expected of a game about the dark knight however the voice acting is top class. The three main characters, Batman, Joker and Harley Quinn, are all voiced by the original voice actors from the tv show; Kevin Conroy as Batman, Mark Hamill as the Joker and Arleen Sorkin as Quinn. Along with that one of my favorite voice actors Steve Blum plays as Killer Croc and you can hardly tell that it is Steve voicing the character.

Overall this game is everything a fan of the Batman universe could ever want. You get to sneak around, take down bad guys, use your gadgets and even see many appearances from fan favorite villans.
• Story - 4 out of 5
• Gameplay – 5 out of 5
• Graphics – 5 out of 5
• Sound - 5 out of 5
• Fun – 4 out of 5
Pros:
- Great Graphics
- Voice Acting top notch
- Good Story
- Extremely nostalgic
- Fun Combat system
Cons:
- Learning curve for combat can take some time
- AI can be a little dumb
I’m giving a Total score of 94%

Bastion is an epic action/adventure with a little bit of RPG elements involved like weapon and character stats. Overall your character will go through different floating islands in order to acquire new weapons and restore the Bastion to its full glory. During this the kid will acquire many different weapons including the Cael Hammer, Fang Repeater, Breaker’s Bow and many others. Also there are fragments in the world for killing various things including non creatures that allow you to upgrade your weapons with the corresponding pieces to the weapons.
The combat is fairly simple in that you have 3 main buttons to remember (this is for PC). The left mouse button is assigned to one weapons and the right mouse button to the other weapon. Q is your special skill that is equipped that can vary between special weapon skills or items like mirror shield and grenade. Along with those 3 buttons you have shift being used for block and locking on and space being used for roll/jump. WASD is your standard movement keys and looking around with your mouse allows the player to attack at different directions. The combat is quite simple to get used to while being a little harder to master but oh so satisfying when you do master it.

The story is a simple one but interesting and unique. The Kid (his actual name in game) wakes up to find his world being destroyed by the Calamity, a mysterious event that fractured the world into many floating pieces and turns people into ash. All while he is travelling around an older man named Rucks is narrating everything you do, something very unique to this game. Rucks tells him that in order to get the Bastion fully up and running “the kid” needs to get the cores and later shards so that he can either restore the world to the way it was before the Calamity or just escape. Along the way he meets two other characters Zia a Ura girl and Zulf the Ura ambassador. Eventually Zulf returns back to the Ura but not before destroying the Bastion’s central device after finding out about Zia’s father being the one that started the Calamity. “The kid” must work to get the shards in order to get Bastion up and working and prevent the Ura from doing anymore damage.

The Graphics are simple but the art is very impressive. Each creature looks distinct and the worlds are all different. As “the kid” walks around the world pieces of it come together making it look like the islands are coming together as he walks around and destroys things. The sound/music is above and beyond some of the best of any indie game or any AAA game I’ve ever played. The music is amazing and even the vocal songs sound really nice. On top of that Rucks the old man narrates everything “the kid” does and I mean everything. If you jump off the island he talks about that, if he sits around just killing random items he mentions that. It isn’t perfect but it makes it feel like he is narrating the players story and nothing is scripted.

Overall the game is clearly a must play for anyone that is a fan of good story, art, sound and action adventure. It was an enjoyable experience even though it was on the shorter side of about 6-8 hours.
• Story - 4 out of 5
• Gameplay – 4 out of 5
• Graphics – 4 out of 5
• Sound - 5 out of 5
• Fun – 4 out of 5
Pros:
- Interesting Story
- Narrating of the Rucks is really cool
- The music is top notch
- The gameplay/combat is fun
Cons:
- Shorter game
- Some of the creatures can get you frustrated
- Not enough fragments to upgrade everything if you would like
I’m giving a Total score of 86%

Just like Assassin’s Creed 2 and Brotherhood before it, Revelations is an Action Adventure 3rd Person RPG. Not much has changed in this one from Brotherhood as Ubisoft felt like they had figured out the best formula to make just about the perfect Assassin’s Creed. However they have added a few things to combat and the cities. In Revelations you can now build different kinds of bombs with different ingredients that are useful in lots of situations. The various bombs include Caltrop Bombs (explodes caltrops that hinder your enemy’s movement), Cherry Bombs (which make a large sound that can lure guards away), Gold Bombs (Filled with coins that cause the crowds to create a distraction) and several more.
They also added a hook blade that while climbing doesn’t really add anything else but when the player is running towards an enemy can use the hook blade to vault over them and keep moving. It also allows the player to utilize the zip lines. On top of that another game mode was added within the single player called “Den Defense.” This mode is sort of like a tower defense mini game in which the player uses “resources” to buy different kind of assassin’s that defends an Assassin’s Den from the Templars. It is a nice fun way to get away from the tediousness of some of the missions.
Overall the gameplay didn’t change much however it did seem like at times they had broken the fights a little more making it more difficult to do various moves and allowed for the player to get hit more in fights. Unlike the other two games I started to get a little irritated with the bugginess of the combat and climbing at times.

The story continues after the ending of Brotherhood in which Desmond has fallen into a coma because of the event that happened at the end of Brotherhood. His Assassin comrades decide to put him back into the Animus where he awakens to Subject Sixteen and Animus Island. Desmond must find out the location of the lost city from Ezio before the Animus deletes and purges him from the system (exactly what happened to Subject Sixteen). When he begins as Ezio he finds himself in Masyaf (The Assassin’s Stronghold from the first game) trying to open Altair’s library to discover the location of The Great Temple but there are Templars everywhere.
Ezio discovers that the way to open the library is to find the 6 Masyaf keys that are located in Constantinople/Istanbul. While he is looking for the new keys he discovers a plot by the Templar led Byzantines to retake Constantinople from the Sultans. Unfortunately I can’t give too much more in plot as it would reveal and spoil too much but suffice to say I enjoyed this story the most out of the three.


It felt like a lot more detail went into the cities in Revelations than Brotherhood or Assassin’s Creed 2. There are a lot more colors, more subtle details and even the characters/NPCs have more life to them. The locals felt unique and the design was quite impressive. It also feels like this was a better done port that the other two as it runs better on my PC however it wasn’t without its bugs. I did get frequent bugs and crashes while playing and it did set me back a bit. However the voice acting is just as good as the other two games if not better. Roger Craig Smith has done his best as Ezio yet and all of the Turkish characters had a fine accent as well. The music actually felt more like it was made for a cinematic experience and that added to the game a lot as well.

Overall I felt like the story was the best yet in this game however the gameplay felt forced and buggy. On top of that the game had several crashes that did make me do parts over again which was unfortunate. However with that being said and even if the score is lower I believe that this game was the better game simply because of the story (That is the part I feel is most important in a game).
• Story - 5 out of 5
• Gameplay – 3 out of 5
• Graphics – 5 out of 5
• Sound - 5 out of 5
• Fun – 4 out of 5
A total score of 4.4 out of 5