Nylige anmeldelser av Afeaven

I like the first Sanctum, but I don't love it. I appreciate its bold mixture of first-person gunplay and tower-defense strategy well enough, but after finishing it I found that I had no desire to rematch its mindless enemies, severely limited maps, and numbing repetition even with friends. I loved the idea, but not the execution. Sanctum 2 is different; this sequel takes all those ideas and runs with them in the right directions, improving in almost every conceivable way upon the original, and I find myself texting friends at ungodly hours to join me to play through a few more rounds.

As before, your task is to erect a maze of walls and turrets to keep the enemies from the your power cores for as long as possible, but the most immediately noticeable improvement is that this is a far more beautiful and varied game. Sanctum 2's colorful but sometimes confusing graphic novel-style story panels lead us through a lush, vibrant world spread across 15 maps. Some of these maps do away with the research facilities almost entirely, and the battles unfold before refreshingly natural surroundings or rusty train yards. Each level feels markedly different, both in look and design, and in most cases they don't overstay their welcome.

The waves of alien enemies are tougher, too. The varied cast of creatures come in relatively small numbers to counterbalance their increased hit points, and ever so often are accompanied by hulking bosses that smash through towers as though they were rotting Lincoln Logs. (It’s a pity that they're merely gargantuan versions of the foot soldiers instead of distinct monsters.) Even placed intelligently, the limit of 10 towers usually can’t handle the hordes alone, which keeps the pace fast and desperate.

In a welcome surprise, many of these these enemies will turn and chase you down if you get too close – a needed improvement over their oblivious marches in the first game. I frequently found myself using it to my advantage by luring a tough enemy who'd managed to pass the towers away from the cores.

On our side, there's more personality to be found. Rather than cloning the original's sole ginger heroine, Skye, in co-op, Sanctum 2 also lets you to step into the role of her spunky sister, a robot who could pass for an 23rd-century Apple product, or an easy-going male shotgunner who looks like Adrien Brody's long-lost badass brother. Each comes with some personality in the form of distinct voiced exclamations and their own primary weapon, ranging from Skye’s humble but punch-packing assault rifle to her sister Sweet's massive grenade launcher that sets enemies on fire.

While they tend toward the familiar archetypes like shotguns rather than inventive sci-fi gadgetry, it's all wrapped in a memorable Portal-meets-Mass Effect aesthetic, and each brings helpful strengths to different situations. Playing alone, for instance, I found the robot's sniper rifle too limiting, but in co-op, I think it's safe to say that that rifle's precision and range saved the round on numerous occasions.

Regardless of which character I played, I found the gunplay of Sanctum 2 more intense than what I saw back in 2011. Switching out your weapons to let them recharge keeps your damage output pumping when you need it most, although I can't deny that I miss some of those frightful moments when a gigantic bug was nearing the core and I was stuck reloading.

Character development is also boosted by a leveling system that rewards success with excellent perks, and they can be combined in great ways. I matched a perk that damages enemies by jumping on them with one that boosts your speed every time you do damage, allowing me to dart in and out of the fray like a ninja. These perks allow you to adjust your gameplay style to suit a particular map rather than trivializing early ones because you're now too powerful for them.

Between firefights, even the business of building your mazes has been significantly refined. Sanctum 2 lets you incrementally upgrade each tower with small boosts to range and damage with every coin you pump into them instead of lump-sum upgrades. Upgrade tiers still exist, but they're more focused on altering tower behaviors, such as firing speed, rather than firepower. Having the choice between how to upgrade, rather than just whether to upgrade or not, is a massive improvement in between-round resource management.

Indeed, the real fun of Sanctum 2 lies in its cooperative play – or at least when it gets moving. However, the fact that only one (or two, tops) players can build anything during a given build phase, there's a lot of time between rounds spent jumping around listlessly waiting. It's a bummer in random groups – I often thought I had a better or faster strategy in mind but couldn't do anything aside from wait them out... or, in a move that's sure to create intra-team drama, sell a tower they've already built and replace it with my own. I could see this getting nasty on Steam or XBLA fast.

Still, setting a match to the endless survival mode while and fighting back the hordes in a full group presents both a welcome challenge and a handy means of earning XP. For a bonus challenge in the Survival Mode, you and your group can even select up to five feats of strength in the campaign mode for 20-percent increases in XP each, which affect gameplay by limiting respawns or allowing enemies to move faster and heal themselves. With all five triggered, Sanctum 2 becomes a brutal challenge even with a full team and all available perks. In short, Sanctum 2 provides a wealth of tools that let you play this fun, action-packed tower-defense hybrid the way you want to play it.

The Verdict
Sanctum 2 improves on the first Sanctum in almost every way, including its robust leveling system and perks, its improved turret management, its visual style, and its customization. Awkward resource handling in co-op and overused boss models detract only a little from the fun of the whole. Whereas the first Sanctum is a fun little oddity that brought some new ideas to the tower-defense genre, this sequel's a tightly paced adventure that builds on them and maintains its momentum to the very end.

Selfie : Sisters of the Amniotic Lens makes me angry. Not a lot does, not really. I’m known for being “so laid back you’re horizontal” but this pile of hipster navel gazing trash makes me want to track down the creators and immolate them. Not because of the 1980s inspired graphics and teletext art nor because of the basic concept of the game, which seems to have been hatched after a fistful of mushrooms washed down by a bottle of absinthe. It is one of the central features of the game that makes me incandescent with rage.

At the very start of the game, the player is met by the text “Shed your skin and tell me what lies beneath. What tears do you cry that are worth bottling?” when creating a player profile. This is no small thing, the game is asking you to bear your soul in text form for you to put in a virtual bottle and unleash upon this virtual world. Bottles that other players find and then are asked to respond with either “condemn” or “free”.

Let me repeat that, people are encouraged to unload their deepest darkest secrets and fears for evaluation by total strangers. Anyone who has spent 90 seconds on 4chan or reddit will know what a bag of angry snakes that is. It is no big stretch of the imagination to visualise someone using the same profile name in this and some other system (Facebook, Google +, Twitter) whilst confessing some deep dark pain and some troll spending 90 seconds on a search engine resulting in something hideous.

Putting aside this mélange of potential horrors, the very story of the game is equally disturbing. It focuses around the eponymous “Sisters of the Amniotic Lens” a cult that carved wounds into themselves in the belief that these act as gateways to another dimension.

From here things get weirder, you find yourself sat at a desk, in front of an old CRT Television surrounded by flies. Why are there flies? That might be something to do with the legless female corpse sat on a chair on your left with a machete through the sternum! By looking at the flies you zap them with the lens on the table in front of you and eventually get to tune the TV to enable access to another dimension.

This is where you follow the “no-wave” music towards a red sphere that when shot moves about between dressmaking dolls floating in space. all in wireframe. Once you have shot it three times it moves to a big wireframe TV with flies flying around it. After killing a fly you can shoot the sphere which enables you to get back through the TV to reality and that lovely lady with her missing limbs.

This is pretty much all the content in the game, the bottles float about with the secrets of people inside them in the space between the dressing dummies. Those you fly towards using the mouse wheel and shoot to reveal people's secrets.

A blog by the name of Video Games and the Bible describes Selfie as “a virtual paradise in an environment increasingly filled with negativity and outright evil” but it is not. It is a dangerous social experiment that deserves to sink into obscurity.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is one of the greatest and most famous RPGs ever created. It’s a game filled with a seemingly limitless amount of possibilities. When it comes to Skyrim on Switch, the big question left for most people is: how well does one of the biggest RPGs ever created play on Nintendo’s hybrid console? The answer is that it holds up, but doesn’t introduce enough new content or features to really draw in returning adventurers.

The Switch version includes the Dragonborn, Hearthfire, and Dawnguard DLC packs, and visually falls somewhere between last year’s Special Edition and the original console release. It’s noticeable in the detail of foliage, water shaders, and generally sharper textures. However, enhancements such as ambient occlusion, volumetric lighting, and dynamic depth of field are noticeably missing when you compare it to the versions on other consoles.

With a resolution of 1080p while docked and 720p undocked, textures are relatively detailed, and character models are… Well, as good as you might expect from a six-year-old, open-world action RPG. It still feels very much like Skyrim, and that’s what’s most important. Whether I was playing docked or undocked, Skyrim appeared to run at a relatively consistent 30 frames per second, with only a few minor dips when loading into new areas. Not a single thing about my entire time with Skyrim on Switch felt like a diminished experience. It shares the exact same atmosphere and feeling that many of us have grown to love—hilarious bugs included.
We can’t talk about Skyrim on Switch without mentioning the newly added motion controls. At times I actually found them to be quite useful and fun. Aiming and firing your bow works just as it does in Breath of the Wild: you take aim with either the Joy-Con or Pro Controller and shoot by pulling back on the right trigger. Spellcasting works similarly, allowing you to take aim by motioning either the left or right Joy-Con. However, when I drew my sword it felt much slower and more counterintuitive than using the gamepad. I also noticed a little bit of a delay with each swing, which made melee combat feel especially sluggish and frustrating.

But my absolute favorite use of motion controls in Skyrim, by far, is the lock picking. It enables one-to-one control over the rotation of each lockpick while using split Joy-Con controllers, and uses HD rumble to notify you with a subtle tick when you find the right spot.

Amiibo support has also been added and works very similar to the way it does in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. You can tap any amiibo once a day to trigger a random loot chest drop, which usually only nets you some lower-level gear and crafting materials. However, Zelda-themed amiibo have a chance of dropping the Champion’s Tunic, Hylian Shield, and Master Sword. All of which can be upgraded, keeping their power levels relevant for much longer than typical weapons and armor. It only took me about seven or eight attempts before I was able to acquire the entire set, but obviously, your mileage may vary. Exploring the world of Skyrim while cosplaying as Link can definitely be a lot of fun, but there’s plenty of other way more powerful gear that you’ll most likely end up switching to sooner or later.

THE VERDICT
Although it may not be immune to the test of time, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim still holds up as one of the most immersive virtual worlds ever created in a video game. All of its vastness, beauty, characters, stories, and goofy bugs fit nicely onto the Switch, where it runs at a good, steady framerate and resolution. The addition of motion controls are handy unless you plan to be a melee fighter, and amiibo support is a nice touch, but neither is really a game changer. This is a great way to get your Skyrim fix if you’ve never played before or have been looking for a reason to jump back in.

Death is a great teacher. Failure in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is, as it always has been for this series, the greatest way to learn where you should have gone, what you shouldn't have done, and how you could have done better. Counter-Strike players spend a lot of time learning -- consequently, they are always getting better.

Growth is an important factor in Global Offensive, especially if you're coming into Counter-Strike fresh or after a sabbatical. This is an extremely hardcore, skill-based first-person shooter, and it forces you to think differently than other modern shooters. If you’re a Call of Duty player, you’re going to need to change your play style to succeed here. Counter-Strike also tries developing into something new here as well, despite doing little to push itself beyond what it’s always done best. Global Offensive modifies old maps to keep veterans on their toes, and introduces official new modes that encourage different play styles for the first time in almost 15 years.

For the uninitiated, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is a small-scale, team-based first-person shooter with permanent death. When a counter-terrorist kills a terrorist planting explosives in a classic Defusal match, or a CT escort swallows a sniper round in Hostage Rescue, the victim is dead for good and doesn't respawn until the next round. As such, players on both sides must exercise skill and care. The bomb objective, meanwhile, gives everyone a purpose. Of course matches end when everyone on a team is dead, but a clever and coordinated terrorist team will give the CTs the slip, plant their bomb, and protect the bomb site. Between rounds, everyone spends earned cash on better gear and guns, and the cycle continues.

Pieces of the Counter-Strike formula are dated at this point, but the superb heart and soul of Global Offensive is timeless. Teams are small, guns are lethal, and rounds are short. There's an addictive just-one-more-round quality to it, because there's a constant desire to do better than last time, to earn a satisfying kill, or to win in a new way. Call of Duty and Battlefield vets will wonder why they can't sprint to escape enemy fire or look down the iron sights to improve aim; Counter-Strike players will feel like they walked into their redecorated home. Certain map redesigns will catch hardcore fans off guard, but the changes are for the best -- the underpass choke point in de_dust, for instance, has a new escape route.

Even in the face of genre evolution, Global Offensive doesn’t care to adapt. CSGO is so dedicated to Counter-Strike's aging ideals despite market and trend changes that it brute-forces its way to success. Part of what makes it such an engaging competitive game is that killing in Global Offensive requires a wholly different skill set than other shooters. Everyone is limited to what they have and can see, with little room for character modification or on-the-fly advantages. Running and gunning is a useless play style, even if you've bought a helmet and kevlar that round, to the point that someone standing still is more likely to score the kill. Walking, crouching, or standing are your best bets to reduce the inaccurate spray of machine-gun fire.

Consequently, killing in Global Offensive feels good. There's a sickening sensation to dropping someone dead because you know they're not coming back. It's also satisfying knowing you used limited resources to play smarter than your victim. If players aren't watching corners, providing covering fire, or using smoke grenades and flashbangs, they're more likely to take a headshot from a more delicate and patient triggerman. The desire to experience that distinct feeling is a strong motivator to keep playing, even when you're getting steamrolled by an obviously better team.

If you've played Counter-Strike before, Global Offensive probably sounds a whole lot like Counter-Strike. Like Counter-Strike: Source before it, Global Offensive exists simply to modernize the look of the classic competitive shooter, while doing little to disrupt the core form and function. At the same time, it does enough to color outside the lines of tradition to justify your time and effort.

Fire is one of the most interesting new combat variables. Molotov cocktails and incendiary grenades either roast groups of guys or force them in another direction. Flames are a useful distraction or scare tactic, too. They're particularly useful during Demolition matches, which focus the fight at a single bomb site rather than giving terrorists two to pick between. The new and modified maps in this mode aren't as big as classic Counter-Strike arenas – entire sections have been cut off to direct teams toward a central location – but their thoughtful design is as intricate as ever. The Lake map is a standout -- there's a wide open yet densely populated yard around the bomb site, which is inside a sizable lakeside home with plenty of vantage points and hiding spots. To separate Demolition from Defusal, players can't buy between rounds. Instead, it takes a cue from the other new mode, Arms Race, in which each kill unlocks another weapon instantly. The better you do, the more you have to switch up the way you play, and because Demolition is so fast you'll need to be quick on your feet.

Unlike other game types, Arms Race allows for respawns. It's the most chaotic and care-free mode in Global Offensive, with players throwing caution to the wind for the sake of climbing the kill ladder as quickly as possible. It's a shame there are only two maps in Arms Race -- a problem that will more likely persist on consoles than PC.

If you have the option, playing the PC version is unquestionably the best way to experience Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Mods, mouse and keyboard, and the usual PC-only options are better than the ports. Plus, Valve is much better about long-term PC support -- it abandoned Team Fortress 2 on consoles, and Portal 2's level editor was PC exclusive. If you prefer to play on consoles, Global Offensive is the same great game, with the following special bits:

The Verdict
Global Offensive is definitely a Counter-Strike sequel -- it looks and feels familiar, with minor tweaks here and there to help balance old issues and surprise longtime players. This is a demanding, skill-based multiplayer game that's as satisfying now as it ever was, but it's for a specific kind of player. If you're not willing to learn to play different than you're used to, look elsewhere. Otherwise, this is a top-tier tactics game that will probably share the long-tailed legacy of its predecessors.

There comes a point while playing Prototype 2 when you realize the marketing campaign was a lie. The Homecoming trailer weaves this heart wrenching story of a soldier who told his family to trust the government and how it cost them their lives. With that pain, Sgt. James Heller becomes a relatable character and we want to see him use his superpowers to exact revenge on those responsible. But that motivation is lost when the game starts and Heller begins shoehorning curse words into every other sentence. The emotional connection to our protagonist is severed. Heller becomes an angry caricature, and Prototype 2 becomes an enjoyable but predictable action title.

If you skipped the original Prototype, you won't have an issue jumping into the sequel. About 14 months after the events of the first game, New York City is once again in the grips of a viral outbreak -- supposedly at the hands of Alex Mercer, the antihero of the original title. Heller blames Mercer for the death of his family, and through a 14 or so-hour game (if you do all the side quests), it's our job to rain vengeance.

The story doesn't get much deeper than that. You'll partner up with shady characters throughout the journey, and they'll feed you missions that usually end with Heller beating the hell out of a bunch of soldiers or mutants. The setup is repetitive, but the action is entertaining.

Prototype 2 gives you five weapons to morph Heller's hands into, and you assign two of them to the face buttons. See, Heller's powers -- given to him in a WTF moment by Mercer -- allow him to create these tools of destruction, leap tall buildings in a single bound, and ingest people so he can steal their memories and shapeshift into their forms. He's also packing the ability to turn people into bio-bombs. So, know that.

It's a delicious recipe. Leaping into the air, targeting a foe and swooping in for a claw attack that beheads the bad guy is fun. Sneaking around a base disguised as a solider and absorbing unaware enemies is cool. Prototype 2 excels at making you feel like a badass. Completing tasks levels you up so you can move faster, fly farther and become invulnerable to gunfire. Absorbing specially marked characters upgrades your abilities so you can pounce on victims from farther away and increase the range of your Whipfist.

With each mission, you feel Heller getting stronger and stronger. Brutes that used to be the bane of your existence eventually become your pets and the first helicopter you KO with an uppercut will leave you feeling like the apex predator of New York City.

On top of that, developer Radical Entertainment nails what work works in open world games -- collectables. New York City is broken into three zones, and each section has a slew of side tasks to knock out. There are infected lairs to clear, teams to kill and blackboxes to find. Although you'll need to find these locales, the general areas are marked on your map. This is awesome and led to me spending an hour knocking out side missions as soon as I stepped foot on each island.

And while that's rad, it kind of points out one the problem with Prototype 2. I was playing to complete it -- to get the 14 blackboxes in the green zone and to get Heller's tendrils to level four. The grinding is fun, but I couldn't have cared less about why this priest had me attacking the 400th Blackwatch soldier that looked just like the 40th.

Even though becoming this ultimate killer is cool, it doesn't hide the fact that nearly every mission is running into a base, forcefully assuming an identity, and exiting the alert. It doesn't hide the fact that the animations for many of Heller's moves look like those of the nearly 3-year-old Prototype, which look like those of the nearly 7-year-old The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction.

Outside of the animations, Prototype 2 still doesn't look like a 2012 blockbuster game. Blackwatch badges are muddy on characters, and Heller's absorbing animations are clearly going through his body and not into it. The best example of all this comes as a stabbing scene at the very beginning. The knife goes into the body, but it's just gliding in like it's stabbing air -- the moves have no impact.