Long time no see, people! I have been busy and as such have not had time to write a review really, so here's a new one for you!
Crystal Dynamics is the developer of this game and Square Enix published the game. Crystal Dynamics is also the developer of the 2013 version of Tomb Raider, which was excellent, and I wish I could do a review for it. Maybe if I ever have the time, one day.
(There were actually people who refused to play the 2013 Tomb Raider game due to the character not having large breasts, which I find outrageous, because the game was great, and you should feel bad for having that opinion. But it's your opinion, so whatever, have fun in la-la land, you chumps.)
Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris is not what most people thought it was going to be, and it isn't what I thought it was going to be either. I nabbed the game and immediately started playing it, and wouldn't you know it, it was an isometric, almost top-down, slightly role-playing, rooty-tooty-point n' shooty. However, as with all "Tomb Raider" games, there were puzzles galore, and each one harder than the last... sort of. My point here is I was expecting another 2013 "Tomb Raider" when in fact, it was definitely far off the mark from that. But there is quite another mark it landed on, and that's fun factor.
I am not good with puzzles, at all, and had to look to Youtube and Google for help with some of them, but even then I figured out most of them on my own, so it's to say that the game isn't for people looking for hardcore puzzling like some Tomb Raider games have. However, still when I figured out the puzzles, even if I had to look them up, there was definitely a sense of achievement.
The game looks decent for the most part, and definitely does not skimp on any action whatsoever, or particles in the graphics for that matter. While recording, I had some framerate issues unfortunately which you'll see in the video at the end of the post.
So the story for the game basically entails Lara Croft discovering a tomb (of course, because loltombraider) that belongs to the Egyptian god, Osiris. However, they find out that Osiris was killed by Set, his brother, out of jealousy or something, even though Set got all the attention he friggin' wanted from ANYONE. So he trapped Osiris's body in a staff and Lara uses the staff throughout the game to solve many puzzles and the like. Also, upon discovering the staff with an archaeologist she was with at the time, who consequently touched the staff and cursed Lara and himself, they loosed Horus, son of Osiris, and Isis, who was Osiris's wife (is, I guess.). When they touched the staff, they also unleashed Set into the world, but he is trapped in the pyramid's tombs gathering his power, waiting for the right time to strike out into the world of man.
So as Lara Croft you basically have to go around and put Osiris back together, since Set carved up Osiris after killing him at some point in the distant past, and put all of his body parts into several conveniently located tombs in the area. These tombs are gathered around one center focal point, which is where you bring the body parts back to place on pedestals to assist Osiris in the fight against Set. That's pretty much the entire game, but the developers have made a right go of it and have a gem (pun intended, you'll see why in the next section) on their hands, in my opinion.
The RPG mechanics in the game are few and far in-between, but generally the main RPG aspect is the gear you can collect. Most weapons are handed to you on a silver platter extremely easily, but most of the gear you can get is easy to acquire and you can even run through the game just with the dual pistols/pistol and torch combo for some levels, it's fairly easy. There is also a mechanic in the game to break vases with gunfire, as the vases drop gems (rupees from Zelda anyone? Lol. Also, PUN CONNECTION!) and you gather them up and you get points for collecting them, but there is actually a counter for each gem that you collect. That counter goes towards a total, where at the end of each level, or even as you run around the main temple area, you can open chests that have pieces of gear inside. Gear consists of 2 wearable rings, an amulet, and 3 slots for weapons. I'd honestly recommend sticking with the dual pistols where they're at and changing the other two slots, but it's up to other people what they want to do. Chests range from 100 gems a chest, to 1,000 gems a chest. The 1,000 gem chests are at the end of each level besides the first level, and usually have a decent quality item inside, better than the other chests. I believe the scale goes 100, 250, 500, 1,000.
I believe that's all to say about the game, have some gameplay!
Friday, December 12, 2014
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
[Random] A Tad Bit About Euro Truck 2's Multiplayer Mod
So I recently got back into playing Euro Truck 2, and decided to try to get into playing the Multiplayer mod. However it seems like I'm just playing single player on it.
The employees eventually bug out and don't earn you money.
The game doesn't let you do Quick Jobs (which are jobs where you can just pick up and drive instead of driving your own rig to a place to pick up cargo and deliver it).
The game freezes where you were when you log off and then takes out money in a lump sum from your loans to pay back the bank even though your employees aren't making money while you're offline.
To un-bug your employees you have to "drive" their truck then go back to your truck and continue your game (is the impression I got so far from the forums).
All in all, an extreme hassle. Also, nobody talks on the servers either so it's just extremely boring all around. There is also no traffic on the multiplayer servers, I.E. other cars you have to go around, etc.
Euro Truck 2 is an excellent game, and one people should play. Just don't bother with the multiplayer until it's way more developed, hopefully. Progress seems to be pretty slow on it so I don't think it will ever get that far.
Buy Euro Truck 2!
The employees eventually bug out and don't earn you money.
The game doesn't let you do Quick Jobs (which are jobs where you can just pick up and drive instead of driving your own rig to a place to pick up cargo and deliver it).
The game freezes where you were when you log off and then takes out money in a lump sum from your loans to pay back the bank even though your employees aren't making money while you're offline.
To un-bug your employees you have to "drive" their truck then go back to your truck and continue your game (is the impression I got so far from the forums).
All in all, an extreme hassle. Also, nobody talks on the servers either so it's just extremely boring all around. There is also no traffic on the multiplayer servers, I.E. other cars you have to go around, etc.
Euro Truck 2 is an excellent game, and one people should play. Just don't bother with the multiplayer until it's way more developed, hopefully. Progress seems to be pretty slow on it so I don't think it will ever get that far.
Buy Euro Truck 2!
Friday, July 18, 2014
[Review] Assassin's Creed 4
Yeah, I'm sure you knew this review was coming. I've been playing a lot of AC3 over the past week, maybe week and a half since I bought it and didn't want to leave it unplayed... like the other 100 games in my Steam library, but nonetheless I wanted to play it since I liked the setting of AC3. At least, how it sounded.
Anyway, AC4 is a much better game than AC3 all around in every aspect whatsoever!
"Ubisoft made a decent game?"
"OH GOD THE WORLD IS ENDING"
Yep.
So the crafting is better, the story is better, the naval gunplay is better, general gunplay is better, everything is better. Combat too, an important part of Assassin's Creed games.
The game is about an Edward Kenway, who goes off from his life with his pretty good looking wife for a guy like Kenway, to go be a pirate. He talks about his father wanting to be a privateer in the King's Navy or some shit and apparently he never did so he wants to be better than his dad I guess, I dunno.
Anyway, so he gets wrapped up in the conflict between Templars and Assassins by accident, since he wasn't looking for a particular person or anything, just floating from island to island. I believe this takes place in the caribbean too but I'm not really sure to be honest. However it gets to the point where you can really just tell that Edward was meant to assist the assassins.
I just have one problem with the beginning of the game, as Edward has had no prior assassin training, yet he runs like an assassin. This baffled me at the beginning of the game as it was really weird to see.
Anyway, so the story is about Edward getting wrapped up in Assassin and Templar affairs to the point he becomes an Assassin himself. He doesn't like doing it however as he's more of one of those 'free spirits' or whatnot but he always gets tangled in stuff anyway. Also I believe this is set somewhere in the 1800's as it's definitely not the 1900's, possibly the same time that AC3 is set in, maybe a little bit afterwards, I am not sure. Anyhoo, I'm not sure how to go about describing the story other than everyone pretty much dies besides a woman on Edward's crew and himself, along with a decent amount of the Assassin population. That pretty much entails the story, to be honest, if you play it, you'll just see what I mean by "everyone dies".
However, I found the real world in the game more intriguing and better than AC1, 2, and 3. You play as a nameless, faceless person who works at Abstergo, testing the Animus and testing the memories of Edward Kenway. One can only assume that by doing this, the person playing it (I.E. the anonymous person you're playing as) has a relation to the Kenways, but I'm not sure as there's no I.D. card or anything that tells you who you are, so eh. It's just a theory.
That being said, in the real world there's a guy named John who happens to work slightly for the Assassins... in a Templar building. But he's head of IT, so no one can eavesdrop on him. However he has you deliver various recordings to, I think her name is Rebecca? Who grabs them from the tablet you carry around with you and leaves. Also the techie guy from the last game, AC3 is also in the building and is sort of like, "reception" even though he's not, it's never really defined who he is. I didn't know who these people were because it's been awhile since I've played AC1 and AC2, but I knew who they were from AC3 because they worked with Desmond... and were significantly less whiny, I'll say that, jesus christ.
Anyway so John has you sneak into a bunch of crap and you're also able to hack other Animuses (Animusi? Animus? Plural?) and get information about what happened to Desmond and such, A lot of it was interesting because I hadn't played AC3 yet, so I read everything I could get my hands on about it. Hours worth of reading in there, I have to say, Ubisoft did an awesome job with the lore of these games. They may be copy+pasted, but goddamn the lore is off the chain!
Anyway, at the end of the game, some stuff happens to John and you keep your job. You're also still alive, yay! So you still get to explore the offices and hack the computers for information, etc. There's 33 computers to hack but I can't find where the other like, 22 are, it's weird. Ah well I'll look at a youtube guide later probably. Anyway, there's a decent amount of stuff to do in this game, for sure.
There's buried treasure, collecting items (chests and other things), doing assassination contracts (which are a lot more formal than AC3, running to the guy and smacking them with your axe and doing 5 of them and getting 2000 reales. (The fuck is this) and collecting animal pelts for crafting. Oh and sailing, they really nailed the sailing. Though it honestly feels less... satisfying taking ships down in this game, but I'm not complaining about the aiming mechanics because it was really frustrating in AC3 for sure, but it was satisfying when you took a man 'o war down or another boat, etc. I'm not saying it's not satisfying doing it in AC4, 'cause once you build your ship up, she's goddamn impenetrable unless you're really careless with things and inventory, I.E. Heavy shot and mortars. They did implement other weapons for the boats into this game which I'm glad to see, makes things a lot more interesting for sure, in ship-fighting.
Nonetheless, the crafting system is very well done in this one. None of that "homestead" shit, you're a goddamn pirate and you know how to make stuff! YEAH! ARRRR! You can expand your inventory to very large portions and go for awhile without needing to restock (15 unit dart pouches are AWESOME). They did a good job with the crafting in this, and I hope they don't change it for future Assassin's Creed games.
Ah... I think that's it? Oh, community events! So if you have a bunch of people on your UPlay friends list, they can come across special events on the map, such as chests with large amounts of money in them (about 1000 reales), white whales to get white whale skin for crafting (buying a skin will run you 20,000 reales, but sometimes you need it so... yep), and Royal Convoys. Royal convoys usually have anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 reales in them, so it makes for good money. However, friends on your friends list have to sail across these/find these in towns to show up on your map and vice versa, so just be aware. And make sure to fill up your Uplay friends list!
I realize a lot of my reviews have been very jump-around lately but whatever, I'm just trying to get points across:
A: Good Game!
B: "Eh" game.
C: Bad Game.
So yeah. I may also add things down the line for both my AC3 and AC4 reviews as I haven't played AC4 in awhile and I'm still working on AC3's collectables.
However, AC4 is a great game. If anyone from Ubisoft reads this, or whatnot, keep this style of game up and just copy+paste into other AC games, damn it!
I'd highly recommend it at full price, or on sale, either or.
Purchase it here:
Anyway, so the story is about Edward getting wrapped up in Assassin and Templar affairs to the point he becomes an Assassin himself. He doesn't like doing it however as he's more of one of those 'free spirits' or whatnot but he always gets tangled in stuff anyway. Also I believe this is set somewhere in the 1800's as it's definitely not the 1900's, possibly the same time that AC3 is set in, maybe a little bit afterwards, I am not sure. Anyhoo, I'm not sure how to go about describing the story other than everyone pretty much dies besides a woman on Edward's crew and himself, along with a decent amount of the Assassin population. That pretty much entails the story, to be honest, if you play it, you'll just see what I mean by "everyone dies".
However, I found the real world in the game more intriguing and better than AC1, 2, and 3. You play as a nameless, faceless person who works at Abstergo, testing the Animus and testing the memories of Edward Kenway. One can only assume that by doing this, the person playing it (I.E. the anonymous person you're playing as) has a relation to the Kenways, but I'm not sure as there's no I.D. card or anything that tells you who you are, so eh. It's just a theory.
That being said, in the real world there's a guy named John who happens to work slightly for the Assassins... in a Templar building. But he's head of IT, so no one can eavesdrop on him. However he has you deliver various recordings to, I think her name is Rebecca? Who grabs them from the tablet you carry around with you and leaves. Also the techie guy from the last game, AC3 is also in the building and is sort of like, "reception" even though he's not, it's never really defined who he is. I didn't know who these people were because it's been awhile since I've played AC1 and AC2, but I knew who they were from AC3 because they worked with Desmond... and were significantly less whiny, I'll say that, jesus christ.
Anyway so John has you sneak into a bunch of crap and you're also able to hack other Animuses (Animusi? Animus? Plural?) and get information about what happened to Desmond and such, A lot of it was interesting because I hadn't played AC3 yet, so I read everything I could get my hands on about it. Hours worth of reading in there, I have to say, Ubisoft did an awesome job with the lore of these games. They may be copy+pasted, but goddamn the lore is off the chain!
Anyway, at the end of the game, some stuff happens to John and you keep your job. You're also still alive, yay! So you still get to explore the offices and hack the computers for information, etc. There's 33 computers to hack but I can't find where the other like, 22 are, it's weird. Ah well I'll look at a youtube guide later probably. Anyway, there's a decent amount of stuff to do in this game, for sure.
There's buried treasure, collecting items (chests and other things), doing assassination contracts (which are a lot more formal than AC3, running to the guy and smacking them with your axe and doing 5 of them and getting 2000 reales. (The fuck is this) and collecting animal pelts for crafting. Oh and sailing, they really nailed the sailing. Though it honestly feels less... satisfying taking ships down in this game, but I'm not complaining about the aiming mechanics because it was really frustrating in AC3 for sure, but it was satisfying when you took a man 'o war down or another boat, etc. I'm not saying it's not satisfying doing it in AC4, 'cause once you build your ship up, she's goddamn impenetrable unless you're really careless with things and inventory, I.E. Heavy shot and mortars. They did implement other weapons for the boats into this game which I'm glad to see, makes things a lot more interesting for sure, in ship-fighting.
Nonetheless, the crafting system is very well done in this one. None of that "homestead" shit, you're a goddamn pirate and you know how to make stuff! YEAH! ARRRR! You can expand your inventory to very large portions and go for awhile without needing to restock (15 unit dart pouches are AWESOME). They did a good job with the crafting in this, and I hope they don't change it for future Assassin's Creed games.
Ah... I think that's it? Oh, community events! So if you have a bunch of people on your UPlay friends list, they can come across special events on the map, such as chests with large amounts of money in them (about 1000 reales), white whales to get white whale skin for crafting (buying a skin will run you 20,000 reales, but sometimes you need it so... yep), and Royal Convoys. Royal convoys usually have anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 reales in them, so it makes for good money. However, friends on your friends list have to sail across these/find these in towns to show up on your map and vice versa, so just be aware. And make sure to fill up your Uplay friends list!
I realize a lot of my reviews have been very jump-around lately but whatever, I'm just trying to get points across:
A: Good Game!
B: "Eh" game.
C: Bad Game.
So yeah. I may also add things down the line for both my AC3 and AC4 reviews as I haven't played AC4 in awhile and I'm still working on AC3's collectables.
However, AC4 is a great game. If anyone from Ubisoft reads this, or whatnot, keep this style of game up and just copy+paste into other AC games, damn it!
I'd highly recommend it at full price, or on sale, either or.
Purchase it here:
And don't forget to sign up for Amazon Prime!
Sunday, July 13, 2014
[Review] Assassin's Creed 3
Genre: RPG
Assassin's Creed 3 is a game set in the colonial era, in a setting between two secret societies that have been carried over from Assassin's Creed 1 and 2, namely the Assassins and Templars. The character you play who controls Connor inside the Animus, a virtual reality machine capable of exploring stories through people's DNA, is Desmond Miles, who is, in my opinion, a whiny, careless guy who doesn't give a hot shit about anyone else, ever, in the game. Which is why the ending is supposed to be so explosive, I guess?
Assassin's Creed 3 was developed by Ubisoft and their various sections of Ubisoft who seem to have just slapped together this game. I'm not going into the details of Ubisoft because they seem to just butcher or copy everything they put out.
Assassin's Creed 3 starts with some of Desmond's stuff, etc in real life. The Templars and Assassins are alive and well in the modern day world, and it seems with Templars in power and the Assassins undermining them at every turn, as it is in other Assassin's Creed games. I can't really remember what happens and I'm not going to go back through this piece of work game to get the information, but I'll sum it up in that the character Desmond plays as in Assassin's Creed 3, Connor, is every bit naive and a little less whiny than Desmond is. However the gameplay doesn't leave too much to be desired... on consoles. But according to the general public, the game does have a ton of bugs, none of which are good and a lot are game-breaking, though they seem to be in the beginning of the game and based on your machine's hardware. If you have a great or good machine, you should be fine. If not, you're on your own with Google search results as Ubisoft does not support AC3 anymore.
Anyway, the first thing I did was hop in the Animus, because I absolutely detest Desmond and wanted to get right into the experience. The game does do a... job on delivering the AC experience, however. But I can't really say if it's good or bad, because I know some people like the AC3 experience and some don't. I seem to be in neutral territory. See, I'd have no problem with the game as long as:
A.) Horse spurring worked (Spurring your horse to go faster while already at a gallop, it can make or break a chase, especially for one mission in the campaign where you essentially have to 'cheat' the system by going backwards...)
B.) Synchronize viewpoints revealed everything on the map. They don't, in this. Or rather, they only reveal a 'few' things on the map.
More in depth on the viewpoints: You have to uncover viewpoints via running around FIRST, then you can use viewpoints to uncover other viewpoints... sometimes.
The rest of the collectables you have to purchase through maps that show locations or such through the general stores or find them on your own. However, there is no map for viewpoints, only blank spots on the map where you have to go find either the viewpoint for that area (or viewpoints in some cases) or you have to actually walk into the area and uncover most of it, or a little of it if you're lucky, to find a collectable. Also, chests are not uncovered and neither are the pages you have to collect along with... I think that's it actually. But there are a TON of each thing, and the developers didn't exactly think about the routes for the pages to run as sometimes they go across an entire street that you can't exactly just jump across to follow. (The pages move and you have to chase them)
The storyline follows Haytham Kenway through, a beginning of sorts where you find out he meets up with his buddies searching for a Precursor site with an amulet they think is a key for it. You find out later what side they're on, however you can pretty much guess the Native American guy on the cover is the assassin, so you can guess what side Haytham is on. (Interesting connection but one nonetheless, Haytham is son of Edward Kenway, who is the main character of AC4. I like exploring family lines like that, it's interesting to see.) Haytham ends up having sex with a Native American woman he rescues from the British from a slave camp named some really long Native American name but she has Haytham call her Ziio for short. Then, perspective switches from playing Haythem to Ziio in the loading screen, to playing Connor Haytham as a child.
I'm gonna skip ahead a bit here to the point where you actually start playing in the open world, because the game holds your hand to a point for a fairly long while.
Ziio dies, and Connor grows up more and a sphere is given to him where he meets one of the members of The First Civilization. Connor is sent to a man named Achilles, who teaches him the way of the assassins pretty much.
A few missions later and multiple years passing, Connor is a full grown man and a skilled assassin.
I have to point out here that at this point in the game some coding must have been removed or something or the model for Connor gets broken because climbing small ledges and trees and moving in different directions gets significantly harder.
You go out into the world to protect your people and help people like Paul Revere, Sam Adams and Benjamin Franklin produce the American Revolution, more or less. You assist in killing a leader at Bunker Hill, all the while the story being more intertwined with the now Americans and Brits and your own Native American people, along with the Assassins and Templars of course. At a point, even Washington commands his men to take out your own people and you have to stop the command.
At this point I'm not looking forward to doing anything else in the game but the missions, as collecting things is way too damn tedious and time consuming to do, considering the vast map distances and lack of fast travel points. Inb4 'Hurrdurr casual fast travel points' Shut the fuck up. Everyone likes fast travel points now.
Edit: I recently found out about War Clubs. And apparently you can throw war clubs. How the FUCK does this make sense? A tomahawk I'd understand throwing, but a fucking CLUB? It's a fucking joke, what the hell?
As for what happens to Desmond in the real world, Desmond pursues some power cells or something like that to power a First Civilization structure. There are three of them plus the settings (places to put them) you have to find inside the structure or something like that. Honestly I'm just skipping over all of it until the game forces me to put everything in. As it turns out, the First Civilization was wiped out by solar flares, and the game bases the next giant solar flare that will wipe out all of humanity on December 21, 2012 which is when the game is based, harharharharhar, so original, Ubisoft.
All in all, 7/10. Including game glitches and all. Love the story, likable characters (and hateable), but the atmosphere of the game is just... not good at all. Love the time setting though, definitely. And what happens to Desmond in the end is just for the best.
Edit (a few days later): Oh yeah, I forgot to talk about the crafting. I believe AC3 is the first game in which they introduce crafting for bigger inventories, etc into the game, and also at this point in the game (since they've stopped patching it despite some very glaring flaws) you can produce items to sell in shops for money too, but it doesn't bring you in much money in my opinion. Anyway crafting is utterly useless until you get everyone on your Homestead. Your Homestead is where you basically live, and you recruit new people to make you products, whether it be to upgrade your inventory space, or to sell to the general stores/around the colonies via boat. However like I said, unless you uncover ALL OF THE MAP EARLY WHICH IS A LOAD OF BULLSHIT BY RUNNING AROUND INSTEAD OF VIEWPOINTS, you'll be doing this in the endgame. Which means you'll be running around with a tiny fucking inventory all game. Yes I'm mad. Currently, I finished the storyline and am pursuing the collectables, as that gives me somewhat of a satisfaction. There's a little more to crafting via Benjamin Franklin's almanac pages which gives you "inventions" you can craft, but you need parts from a lot of people before you can even craft it.
Honestly, the crafting system is really weird and Ubisoft did a bad job with it. I'm not sure when Farcry 3 came out, but the crafting system in that is more similar to what is in AC4, which is a far better crafting system. I respect the idea of a "homestead" since it is colonial times, but I mean, come on. You're playing a Native American character who was raised on the land. You should at least be able to craft your own holsters and pouches to increase your inventory space or something, but I guess Ubisoft took the low road on that one. F you Ubisoft, F you.
Needless to say if it's cheap, pick it up as it's worth at least 15 bucks at the most. Anything over that is a no-no.
Buy Assassin's Creed 3 here on Amazon (DRM STEAM FOR PC):
And don't forget to sign up for Amazon Prime!
Assassin's Creed 3 is a game set in the colonial era, in a setting between two secret societies that have been carried over from Assassin's Creed 1 and 2, namely the Assassins and Templars. The character you play who controls Connor inside the Animus, a virtual reality machine capable of exploring stories through people's DNA, is Desmond Miles, who is, in my opinion, a whiny, careless guy who doesn't give a hot shit about anyone else, ever, in the game. Which is why the ending is supposed to be so explosive, I guess?
Assassin's Creed 3 was developed by Ubisoft and their various sections of Ubisoft who seem to have just slapped together this game. I'm not going into the details of Ubisoft because they seem to just butcher or copy everything they put out.
Assassin's Creed 3 starts with some of Desmond's stuff, etc in real life. The Templars and Assassins are alive and well in the modern day world, and it seems with Templars in power and the Assassins undermining them at every turn, as it is in other Assassin's Creed games. I can't really remember what happens and I'm not going to go back through this piece of work game to get the information, but I'll sum it up in that the character Desmond plays as in Assassin's Creed 3, Connor, is every bit naive and a little less whiny than Desmond is. However the gameplay doesn't leave too much to be desired... on consoles. But according to the general public, the game does have a ton of bugs, none of which are good and a lot are game-breaking, though they seem to be in the beginning of the game and based on your machine's hardware. If you have a great or good machine, you should be fine. If not, you're on your own with Google search results as Ubisoft does not support AC3 anymore.
Anyway, the first thing I did was hop in the Animus, because I absolutely detest Desmond and wanted to get right into the experience. The game does do a... job on delivering the AC experience, however. But I can't really say if it's good or bad, because I know some people like the AC3 experience and some don't. I seem to be in neutral territory. See, I'd have no problem with the game as long as:
A.) Horse spurring worked (Spurring your horse to go faster while already at a gallop, it can make or break a chase, especially for one mission in the campaign where you essentially have to 'cheat' the system by going backwards...)
B.) Synchronize viewpoints revealed everything on the map. They don't, in this. Or rather, they only reveal a 'few' things on the map.
More in depth on the viewpoints: You have to uncover viewpoints via running around FIRST, then you can use viewpoints to uncover other viewpoints... sometimes.
The rest of the collectables you have to purchase through maps that show locations or such through the general stores or find them on your own. However, there is no map for viewpoints, only blank spots on the map where you have to go find either the viewpoint for that area (or viewpoints in some cases) or you have to actually walk into the area and uncover most of it, or a little of it if you're lucky, to find a collectable. Also, chests are not uncovered and neither are the pages you have to collect along with... I think that's it actually. But there are a TON of each thing, and the developers didn't exactly think about the routes for the pages to run as sometimes they go across an entire street that you can't exactly just jump across to follow. (The pages move and you have to chase them)
The storyline follows Haytham Kenway through, a beginning of sorts where you find out he meets up with his buddies searching for a Precursor site with an amulet they think is a key for it. You find out later what side they're on, however you can pretty much guess the Native American guy on the cover is the assassin, so you can guess what side Haytham is on. (Interesting connection but one nonetheless, Haytham is son of Edward Kenway, who is the main character of AC4. I like exploring family lines like that, it's interesting to see.) Haytham ends up having sex with a Native American woman he rescues from the British from a slave camp named some really long Native American name but she has Haytham call her Ziio for short. Then, perspective switches from playing Haythem to Ziio in the loading screen, to playing Connor Haytham as a child.
I'm gonna skip ahead a bit here to the point where you actually start playing in the open world, because the game holds your hand to a point for a fairly long while.
Ziio dies, and Connor grows up more and a sphere is given to him where he meets one of the members of The First Civilization. Connor is sent to a man named Achilles, who teaches him the way of the assassins pretty much.
A few missions later and multiple years passing, Connor is a full grown man and a skilled assassin.
I have to point out here that at this point in the game some coding must have been removed or something or the model for Connor gets broken because climbing small ledges and trees and moving in different directions gets significantly harder.
You go out into the world to protect your people and help people like Paul Revere, Sam Adams and Benjamin Franklin produce the American Revolution, more or less. You assist in killing a leader at Bunker Hill, all the while the story being more intertwined with the now Americans and Brits and your own Native American people, along with the Assassins and Templars of course. At a point, even Washington commands his men to take out your own people and you have to stop the command.
At this point I'm not looking forward to doing anything else in the game but the missions, as collecting things is way too damn tedious and time consuming to do, considering the vast map distances and lack of fast travel points. Inb4 'Hurrdurr casual fast travel points' Shut the fuck up. Everyone likes fast travel points now.
Edit: I recently found out about War Clubs. And apparently you can throw war clubs. How the FUCK does this make sense? A tomahawk I'd understand throwing, but a fucking CLUB? It's a fucking joke, what the hell?
As for what happens to Desmond in the real world, Desmond pursues some power cells or something like that to power a First Civilization structure. There are three of them plus the settings (places to put them) you have to find inside the structure or something like that. Honestly I'm just skipping over all of it until the game forces me to put everything in. As it turns out, the First Civilization was wiped out by solar flares, and the game bases the next giant solar flare that will wipe out all of humanity on December 21, 2012 which is when the game is based, harharharharhar, so original, Ubisoft.
All in all, 7/10. Including game glitches and all. Love the story, likable characters (and hateable), but the atmosphere of the game is just... not good at all. Love the time setting though, definitely. And what happens to Desmond in the end is just for the best.
Edit (a few days later): Oh yeah, I forgot to talk about the crafting. I believe AC3 is the first game in which they introduce crafting for bigger inventories, etc into the game, and also at this point in the game (since they've stopped patching it despite some very glaring flaws) you can produce items to sell in shops for money too, but it doesn't bring you in much money in my opinion. Anyway crafting is utterly useless until you get everyone on your Homestead. Your Homestead is where you basically live, and you recruit new people to make you products, whether it be to upgrade your inventory space, or to sell to the general stores/around the colonies via boat. However like I said, unless you uncover ALL OF THE MAP EARLY WHICH IS A LOAD OF BULLSHIT BY RUNNING AROUND INSTEAD OF VIEWPOINTS, you'll be doing this in the endgame. Which means you'll be running around with a tiny fucking inventory all game. Yes I'm mad. Currently, I finished the storyline and am pursuing the collectables, as that gives me somewhat of a satisfaction. There's a little more to crafting via Benjamin Franklin's almanac pages which gives you "inventions" you can craft, but you need parts from a lot of people before you can even craft it.
Honestly, the crafting system is really weird and Ubisoft did a bad job with it. I'm not sure when Farcry 3 came out, but the crafting system in that is more similar to what is in AC4, which is a far better crafting system. I respect the idea of a "homestead" since it is colonial times, but I mean, come on. You're playing a Native American character who was raised on the land. You should at least be able to craft your own holsters and pouches to increase your inventory space or something, but I guess Ubisoft took the low road on that one. F you Ubisoft, F you.
Needless to say if it's cheap, pick it up as it's worth at least 15 bucks at the most. Anything over that is a no-no.
Buy Assassin's Creed 3 here on Amazon (DRM STEAM FOR PC):
And don't forget to sign up for Amazon Prime!
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
[Review] Creeper World 3
Genre: RTS
Creeper World Website
KnuckleCracker is the developer of the Creeper World franchise and they have done a fantastic job with these games. In my opinion, 1 is better than 2 and 3 is better than 2 also (CW1>CW2<CW3). The only reason for that is the perspective on CW2. It was uh... it was fairly not thought out. Definitely REALLY hard in the later levels, like, unneedlessly hard.
It's not even worth mentioning the system specs to run this game because it's really really low. Like, unless you overbuild by a bajillion units (by that time you've already got the Creeper contained and everything, you'd be so bored) your computer won't lag at all. I mean, I'm pretty sure this would be able to run on a Win98 machine. Even 95.
So, KnuckleCracker is a fairly recent dev company, with only the CW games having been made, they aren't a huge name in the game world, but Creeper World has definitely made an impact. Rock, Paper, Shotgun and IGN have reviewed CW as well as other various gaming websites. CW1 was designed by Virgil Wall, who started the Creeper World franchise. As CW has grown, so has his team. CW2 was designed by Virgil Wall of course, along with some other team members, and CW3 has a slightly bigger team also.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Creeper World is simple. Click the unit you want to place, and click where you want to place it. Sort of like a tower defense game but more RTS like in the fact that you can place units anywhere you want on the map, besides on top of the Creeper of course. (Well, you could do that, but that's somewhat advanced gameplay) Here's a video to show you:
This is essentially all you're going to see, all the time. A sea of blue and your trusty mortars and blasters defending your 1, 2, or 3 bases you may have set up. It's a very intuitive set up that Virgil has made for himself in CW3 and in CW1 too. There are major differences from CW1 and CW3, and that's the fact that:
There are new units
The interface is smoother
A connecting storyline to CW2 (I think all the storylines should have been connected, but whatever)
Overall smoother gameplay in CW3
I mean overall, the game is a much better game then CW1, but every now and again I go back and play just for nostalgia's sake.
The game consists of your Command Center. This is the big blue building (well, 3 big blue buildings) in the video that send out those little orb-looking things called 'packets'. Packets are the lifeblood of your system. They are literally your blood, and the connectors are your veins, between the Collectors (the little round green things). You can see the packets running through Collectors and to your weapons which are holding back the Creeper. Here's a small guide to packets, more or less:
Red Packets: Ammo for your weapons
Green Packets: Power for Totems (explained later)
Grey Packets: Building Packets. These Packets go into building your turrets, mortars, Collectors, Reactors, everything. They are what gets things built.
Aether Packets: These Packets don't travel through the connections in your network, they are actually dispersed into the air and go directly into your Forge.
Also, after your weapons are built, your Command Center(s) immediately sends out Ammo packets to your weapons after they're built. This way you can immediate begin hitting the Creeper as it's coming up to you.
Now, in the video you do see 3 Command Centers. However, they don't split the loads evenly even if they're all connected together, which is something I hate. I take it this would have been harder to code for KnuckleCracker or Virgil himself, which is fine, but I really think it'd be more efficient if the Energy load was spread out between Command Centers.
Also, about the Totems: The Totems are the things you see in the Creeper, those green, flower-looking things. They give you Aether to power your Forge for upgrades. Usually you can nab one in the beginning of the level, and in some of the other levels in the game outside of the campaign, there are little to no Totems, or there's an average amount of Totems. If you get one in the beginning of the level and keep hold of it with the advancing Creeper in the beginning, you're pretty much set for the game, it's just a waiting game to get enough Aether to have decent upgrades.
Another new feature I'd like to point out is the Forge. You get the Forge during one of the campaign missions and it is buildable in your base from the Titans tab in your menu. The Forge is pretty much your best weapon against the Creeper, as it upgrades your weapons to have a higher fire rate and range, and move speed, among other fairly important things.
I'm not going to delve into every single little new thing Creeper World 3 has exactly, but there are some new units and old units, I'll just say that.
Sublevel of Gameplay: Interface (UI):
The UI for Creeper World in general has always been a well-thought out, great interface. It's not intrusive, it's smooth, you click a button and you get the unit that you want to place or the menu you want to open up. This is the same for Creeper World 3, and quite possibly even better, since the interface looks quite better than Creeper World 1.
I'm not going to post screenshots a lot here because it's really all in the video. However you'll have screenshots if I need to point something out or something like that. In the video you can blatantly see the UI is very good.
Sublevel of Gameplay: Controls:
The mouse and your keyboard (if the hotkeys work for you, they didn't for me) are your best friends against the Creeper menace! That's all I really have to say about the controls, to be honest here, nothing spectacular.
Sublevel of Gameplay: AI Difficulty:
I'll be the first to tell you... well, here, let's start with a statement, in that you can't fight the ocean. You can shore up against it, you can contain it, you can zap it with lasers and deteriorate some of it, but you most likely will never completely eliminate it. This is what it's like, fighting the Creeper. The Creeper is pretty much the ocean, if the ocean destroyed everything it touched, anyway. It may be an un-apt analogy, but you get it. The Creeper is definitely something to gear if you hop right in and don't know how to play.
There is no AI difficulty in this game, only perhaps the intervals at which Creeper spawns from it's nodes differ. The faster it spawns, the harder it is to hold it back. Initially, anyway. The Creeper eventually evens out against your lasers and mortars and anti-Creeper weapons, at which point you can focus on building up your energy resources and making sure you have enough energy to support the packets being sent out from your Command Center.
All in all, skipping over some needless points here, CW3 is definitely a game to support Knucklecracker on. Also you can play some more of CW3 for free at Kongregate.
Gameplay
The gameplay of Creeper World is simple. Click the unit you want to place, and click where you want to place it. Sort of like a tower defense game but more RTS like in the fact that you can place units anywhere you want on the map, besides on top of the Creeper of course. (Well, you could do that, but that's somewhat advanced gameplay) Here's a video to show you:
This is essentially all you're going to see, all the time. A sea of blue and your trusty mortars and blasters defending your 1, 2, or 3 bases you may have set up. It's a very intuitive set up that Virgil has made for himself in CW3 and in CW1 too. There are major differences from CW1 and CW3, and that's the fact that:
There are new units
The interface is smoother
A connecting storyline to CW2 (I think all the storylines should have been connected, but whatever)
Overall smoother gameplay in CW3
I mean overall, the game is a much better game then CW1, but every now and again I go back and play just for nostalgia's sake.
The game consists of your Command Center. This is the big blue building (well, 3 big blue buildings) in the video that send out those little orb-looking things called 'packets'. Packets are the lifeblood of your system. They are literally your blood, and the connectors are your veins, between the Collectors (the little round green things). You can see the packets running through Collectors and to your weapons which are holding back the Creeper. Here's a small guide to packets, more or less:
Red Packets: Ammo for your weapons
Green Packets: Power for Totems (explained later)
Grey Packets: Building Packets. These Packets go into building your turrets, mortars, Collectors, Reactors, everything. They are what gets things built.
Aether Packets: These Packets don't travel through the connections in your network, they are actually dispersed into the air and go directly into your Forge.
Also, after your weapons are built, your Command Center(s) immediately sends out Ammo packets to your weapons after they're built. This way you can immediate begin hitting the Creeper as it's coming up to you.
Now, in the video you do see 3 Command Centers. However, they don't split the loads evenly even if they're all connected together, which is something I hate. I take it this would have been harder to code for KnuckleCracker or Virgil himself, which is fine, but I really think it'd be more efficient if the Energy load was spread out between Command Centers.
Also, about the Totems: The Totems are the things you see in the Creeper, those green, flower-looking things. They give you Aether to power your Forge for upgrades. Usually you can nab one in the beginning of the level, and in some of the other levels in the game outside of the campaign, there are little to no Totems, or there's an average amount of Totems. If you get one in the beginning of the level and keep hold of it with the advancing Creeper in the beginning, you're pretty much set for the game, it's just a waiting game to get enough Aether to have decent upgrades.
Another new feature I'd like to point out is the Forge. You get the Forge during one of the campaign missions and it is buildable in your base from the Titans tab in your menu. The Forge is pretty much your best weapon against the Creeper, as it upgrades your weapons to have a higher fire rate and range, and move speed, among other fairly important things.
I'm not going to delve into every single little new thing Creeper World 3 has exactly, but there are some new units and old units, I'll just say that.
Sublevel of Gameplay: Interface (UI):
The UI for Creeper World in general has always been a well-thought out, great interface. It's not intrusive, it's smooth, you click a button and you get the unit that you want to place or the menu you want to open up. This is the same for Creeper World 3, and quite possibly even better, since the interface looks quite better than Creeper World 1.
I'm not going to post screenshots a lot here because it's really all in the video. However you'll have screenshots if I need to point something out or something like that. In the video you can blatantly see the UI is very good.
Sublevel of Gameplay: Controls:
The mouse and your keyboard (if the hotkeys work for you, they didn't for me) are your best friends against the Creeper menace! That's all I really have to say about the controls, to be honest here, nothing spectacular.
Sublevel of Gameplay: AI Difficulty:
I'll be the first to tell you... well, here, let's start with a statement, in that you can't fight the ocean. You can shore up against it, you can contain it, you can zap it with lasers and deteriorate some of it, but you most likely will never completely eliminate it. This is what it's like, fighting the Creeper. The Creeper is pretty much the ocean, if the ocean destroyed everything it touched, anyway. It may be an un-apt analogy, but you get it. The Creeper is definitely something to gear if you hop right in and don't know how to play.
There is no AI difficulty in this game, only perhaps the intervals at which Creeper spawns from it's nodes differ. The faster it spawns, the harder it is to hold it back. Initially, anyway. The Creeper eventually evens out against your lasers and mortars and anti-Creeper weapons, at which point you can focus on building up your energy resources and making sure you have enough energy to support the packets being sent out from your Command Center.
All in all, skipping over some needless points here, CW3 is definitely a game to support Knucklecracker on. Also you can play some more of CW3 for free at Kongregate.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
[News] Xbox One And PS4 Similar In Construct, Makes Game Developing Easier
(This was supposed to be published Thursday but I was busy. So this is today’s article, sorry for inconsistencies. Friggin’ D3:RoS review took forever so I’m trying to get back on track.)
So as we all know the Xbox One and PS4 are next gen gaming systems. However I myself would not have expected them to assist developers in making games, more like hinder them. Just because it’s like ‘Oh, now we have to up our systems and make more graphically detailed games because that’s what the masses want’ or some junk like that.
However, to Massive Entertainment’s Managing Director, David Poldfeldt, this isn’t true one bit. He believes a lot more things will be easier with the Xbox One’s systems, along with the PS4′s. (Just an FYI this is an Xbox One news article, so deal with the PS4 here. God.) The PS4 and the Xbox One apparently share the same specs mostly along with build of the system, which will make developing for both platforms much easier. The last gen offered two completely separate types of systems which made developing a pain in the ass for developers.
Poldfeldt said that it excites him, the fact that the two consoles are so similar. He also mentioned in the previous gen, they spent so much time having to develop for 2 completely separate consoles to get the same thing on both platforms when they could have spent that time obviously working on the game, roughly 25% of the ‘game dev time’ was spent developing for each other console. Also it means that they’re roughly similar to PC too apparently, so that’s good to hear. Now they should have 20-25% more time to put into games’ development, which is always nice.
Honestly, publishers are a bitch in my opinion. Yes, you have to set a release date. You need hype, publicity, and the publisher can offer that. However, in my opinion, you really, really need to say, hey, it’ll be finished when it’s goddamn finished, and just work on the game and let the publisher do its thing with other games that are releasing. I feel like publishers put too much pressure on game developers to rush games out and create bad quality games (I’m looking at you, EA. Activision and Epic Games, and other companies being publishers, not so much. They understand, I think anyway.) and then BAM, zero-day patches for everybody. And no one likes a buggy game upon release. Stop pressuring game developers in general and start supporting them like you’re supposed to be doing. Though I get everyone needs a bit of pressure every once in awhile, but that’s why you have a job. If you didn’t have a job I think you’d be under a lot more pressure. I should know, right now…
Anyway, back to the main topic of easier game developing. At this point since the systems are so similar, customers will expect higher quality games because of additional time being put into creating these games. David believes again, this will help to get things done faster and more effectively, again, creating better quality games for all of us. However, of course, there is the technical side of things. Perhaps something in the game completely bugs out and takes the team an additional month to fix. Rare, but it does probably happen, or something of the like in any case. Or any bad social situation with the team or HR problems that need to be resolved. THQ’s closing comes to mind for me, to be honest. Not making enough revenue is always an issue too, to pay people and to keep dev centers up. At least on the technology part there’s a lot less work to be doing, so Poldfeldt says.
The Division looks like it’s shaping up to be a great game, and from this information, they should have more time to put into it for Xbox One gaming, PC gaming, and PS4 gaming, and I can’t wait to play it.
The Division is based off of one of Tom Clancy’s books, one I’ll be reading quite soon before the release of the game. Tom Clancy is a fantastic writer, and Massive Entertainment has some talented game developers, so we’ll see where that goes.
Prepurchase The Division right here:
Don’t forget to sign up for Amazon Prime! Only $99 per year, that’s less than $10 a month! Amazon Prime is a program that many items on Amazon use for free shipping, no matter the cost of the item. Just go to the link at the top left that says “Try Prime”!
[News] Sony Is Apparently Going To Sell All Of Its Shares In Square Enix
Apparently Sony is going to sell its 9.5 billion shares in Square Enix, totaling to an amount of 47 million dollars. Which honestly, isn’t a lot, in my opinion and Final Fantasy has been going downhill for quite a number of years, probably since FF11(Final Fantasy 11) which was their first MMORPG, which was a total flop to a lot of people.
Sony announced this today in a Japanese news release, which was translated by the Wall Street Journal. This amount of shares also translates to 4.8 billion yen. The Wall Street Journal mentions that Sony had 8.2% ownership of Square Enix in stocks! That’s quite a bit.
In the last year, it seems Sony has been having some troubles. Sony has sold major office buildings, important to Sony, and they’ve laid off thousands of employees, and they’ve even sold their PC section as a means to make a profit. I always thought Sony was doing really, really good, being that Final Fantasy is based on Playstation systems of course. Always thought those two companies really had something going on. But I guess not, and I guess Sony’s going down the tube?
Will we see a PS5? Who knows, at this point, with this news.
Sony invested in Square Enix in the early 2000′s, and they’ve been buying shares ever since. Sad to see them part, really.
Square Enix on the other hand has really been just… not good with their games, lately. With the release of FF:ARR and FF15 on the way, and FF13 along with the sequel to 13, 13-2 and then Lightning Returns, it’s been a shit few years for them, pardon the language. They really need to get back to their roots and make some decent video games again. I liked ARR and 13, but 10X2 was definitely good to me in my opinion, and of course there’s the ever famous X (10), and 7. Can’t be bothered with Roman numerals I don’t know.
If you’d like to take a look at X and X-2, take a look at this, it’s an HD remastered version of the game that I’m sure people will buy up as you read these very words:
Also a link to FFXIV: ARR:
A Realm Reborn (Cheaper than Amazon!)
And the 3 FF13 games if you’re interested (Personally I thought the storyline was pretty good, but that’s all I play the FF games for is the storyline, really.):
Don’t forget to sign up for Amazon Prime! Only $99 per year, that’s less than $10 a month! Amazon Prime is a program that many items on Amazon use for free shipping, no matter the cost of the item. Just go to the link at the top left that says “Try Prime”!
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