Tom

Fallout: New Vegas Review for PC

I think this review is going to be much like my Arkham City review; I would say the majority of user’s on Steam will have already purchased Fallout: New Vegas, and most will have probably even finished it. So this review will be aimed at the probable minority of people who don’t have it, or just haven’t played it.

Fallout New Vegas was released in October 2010. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic, open world environment around the areas of Nevada and California. You play as a Courier who has been hired to deliver an unknown package to the New Vegas strip across the Mojava Desert. During the delivery, you are captured and shot dead (or so they think). After being recovered by a friendly robot, you are thrust into this massive world which is filled with various different factions competing for control over the land.

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This was my first ever experience with a Fallout game; I had previously watched my younger brother play a little bit here and there, and of course I am on the internet, and so it’s always mentioned on popular websites and subreddits so I knew what I was getting into, a huge deep time sink.

Game play is focused around the use of your V.A.T.S for guns, as well melee weapons. V.A.T.S pauses the game so to speak, and allows you to target certain areas on the enemies body. You have a limited amount of action points to use in this mode, so once you aim, you come out of the aiming mode and the character carries out the orders you set. You can then either wait until your action points have been replenished or use free range shooting mode.

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As you wander around the desert, you will find plenty of items, weapons, food, drink, books and many more items that will be of use to you in someway or another. Obviously you cannot loot every single thing you find, alas we have a weight limit for how much you can carry on you at any given time. This can sometimes lead to difficult choices to make when it comes to looting heavy weapons or armor. As you progress through the game and get a higher reputation, you unlock safe houses, where you can store your items in fridges, cupboards and desks for safe keeping while you are out traveling.

One thing I was surprised about in Fallout is that there is surprisingly not as much shooting and actual fighting as I had initially imagined. I created my character to be more based around being able to talk his way out of situations, and this cut down the amount of fighting I had to do by quite a bit I think. It was a nice surprise to see this big game take this approach as I have not come across many that have; like wise, you can go guns blazing at all times if you want; although I would hate to see how your story ends out.

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Goat Simulator Review for PC

So I was deciding whether to do a serious review on Goat Simulator because I haven’t seen one on Steam; so rather than join the bandwagon of unfunny jokey reviews for the game, I’ll stick to my guns…

Goat Simulator does exactly what it says on the tin; you play as a Goat, You cause havoc wherever you go; trashing, bashing, causing explosions, destroying houses, jumping on trampolines, basically anything you want. With plenty of interactive objects in the game, you can spend plenty of time wandering around never finding a dull moment.

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The graphics in goat simulator are really nice. They aren’t on the levels of Evolve or something, but for this type of game, you aren’t really going to be playing for the top of the range graphics. The music and audio are exactly what you would expect here; derpy music in the background as you potter about the city, along with cries of fear from the civilians as the demon goat runs rampant.

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There are three different areas in Goat Simulator; each zone is huge, ranging from theme parks, to crop fields, every building has something to do in it, every room has something to interact with or destroy. I honestly don’t think there is anything wrong with either of the levels included here. There is nothing difficult in the game to do here at all. There are no real objectives, just an open world sandbox game where you do whatever you want, whenever you want.

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I have managed to put about twenty hours into Goat Simulator; most of this time was playing on local screen co-op with my girlfriend, and then a couple more hours’ achievement hunting, and boy there is some pretty ridiculous achievements to do. Other than the developers openly coming out stating that they would not be fixing any bugs in the game, I had no real game breaking bugs, apart from sometimes falling through the world; however this was fixed easily by just respawning again.

If you want a game that is just purely for messing around in with no real aim and wanting some real stupidity, then Goat Simulator will give you plenty of fun; granted this type of game is not for everyone, I enjoyed it though.

Tom’s Score Card
1) Stay away
2) Not Recommended
3) Only recommended when on sale
4) Recommended
5) Highly recommended
6) This is a must play

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Shadwen Review

You play Shadwen as an assassin on a quest to kill the king, but along the way she encounters a little girl, Lily. Lily follows Shadwen on her adventure throughout the kingdom, and you have to make the moral decision along the way of whether to murder enemy guard’s right in front of this poor little girl’s eyes or find another way around.

The main game play in Shadwen is quite simply, remain hidden from enemy guards. If you get caught or detected, you will fail. The game’s rewind time mechanic allows you to rectify any mistakes you make really easily and you will make a lot of them. Accidently knock over some glass bottles and alert the guard? Just rewind time and be more careful next time! The game also offers a unique element where if your character is not moving time freezes. This took me a while to get used to as it can be a little disorienting when you are used to the world just carrying on around you when you are idol, but you soon get used to it and are able to use it to your full advantage. It allows you to plot your next movement precisely without worry of being caught, it also makes clambering up buildings and scaffolding much easier as you can pause time and carefully aim where your next grapple hook is going to land.

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Speaking of the grapple hook, this will also be a key piece of equipment throughout the game. You can use it to grab onto objects in the environment to cause a distraction for the guards. You can pull crates, shelves, pretty much anything which can be moved around with your hook. This will allow you to slip past guards unnoticed and without brutally killing them. You can even make deaths of guards look like it was an accident, maybe by pulling a box down on their heads, and whilst this does count as you killing them, the guards won’t instantly become alert of any suspicious activity. You will also be able to create traps and decoys too, these more or less will also kill the guard, but in much more interesting ways than just stabbing them in the back, with items such as poison traps and spiked devices.

The aim on each level is to create path safe for the young girl Lily to pass through unharmed. The game right down to its core is essentially a long escort quests, but don’t worry – Lily’s AI is absolutely stellar. She will remain hidden in shadows, boxes and haystacks and not cause you any unwarranted hassle. You can more or less forget about her right up until you reach the end of the level and have to backtrack to clear a path for her. She won’t just walk out in front of guards, or make any noise which you wouldn’t normally expect. I was really impressed with how well Lily reacted to every situation thrown at her such as guards unexpectedly changing their patrol path.

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Ryse: Son of Rome – Review

Ryse: Son of Rome is a third person hack and slash adventure game. It was initially released in November of 2013 as an Xbox One exclusive launch title, but was later ported onto PC in October 2014. The game is set in an alternative version of Rome history. You play as a centurion named Marius Titus as you battle through the game as you seek revenge for the killing of your family.

The main gameplay element in Ryse: Son of Rome is the hack and slash combat. This feels very similar to other action games such as the Batman series, a very simple but fluid action system means you have no problems taking on hordes of enemies, as you weaken your foes, you get the option to perform an execution on them – this prompts for a small quick time event as you have to press the corresponding mouse button with the colours on the screen, carrying out an execution every time you can tends to make the gameplay feel very repetitive though; it’s nice for the first few times but it soon becomes the same over and over again. You are able to learn different variations of executions through the upgrade menu, allowing you to purchase upgrades using the experience points you have earned, ironically though performing executions. On top of being able to upgrade the executions, you can also add the points into more passive talents such as straight health upgrades, or adding a multiplier to the amount of experience points you earn. If you are like me and you don’t really like learning combos and such, the passives tend to be more the attractive options here.

There is a hint of strategy involved in Ryse: Son of Rome too; a couple of battle scenes allow you to command orders to squads of men, such as ordering archers to cover a flank, or ordering the catapults to aim on different targets – these are few and far between however so don’t go into this game expecting a really in depth strategy element. The larger scale fights are really impressive though, one scene which stands out the most to me would be where you have to defend a castle against an oncoming barbarian army, whilst it is completely reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings scene in Helms Deep but has some really action packed gameplay as you avoid incoming fire bombs, preventing enemies from scaling the walls by kicking off their ladders and tackling any enemies which make it through.

Ryse: Son of Rome has some excellent graphics – this is one of the first “next gen” games released, and it really does look next gen; it looks almost photo realistic, the characters look real and the environments which the game is set in look absolutely stunning. There are a couple low quality textures but nothing you will really notice unless you go out of your way to find them. All of the animations are perfect too; the fluid combat system allows for some exciting fight scenes as you string together plenty of combos.

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Duelyst – A Mix Between Hearthstone and Final Fantasy?

 

Duelyst is a multiplayer turn based battle game, released in April 2016 worldwide, as a free to play title. Developed by Counterplay Games. This team had members in who worked on the Ratchet and Clank series, and the main developer of Diablo III.

 

Gameplay is a really easy to understand concept. You start off with a deck of cards, drawing a new card each turn.  Turn based style combat, with the use of mana points to cast various spells or summon minions to aid you in battle. The combat system is really simple, your creatures and generals have an attack stat, and a health stat. You simply do the attack stat in damage, they do theirs back in a counter-attack, and that’s it. It would have been nice to see some sort of bonus if you are attacking from the rear or flank though.  Even though the game is turn based, it is still relatively fast-paced. A single battle will last between 5 and 10 minutes. This means you can find yourself 10 battles in to your session before you even realise it. The deck building aspect isn’t really very prominent unless you purchase extra cards through the microtransactions store. I found the decks you start with to be more than capable in the multiplayer mode, maybe if you want to reach the really higher ranks you may need to drop a couple of quid here and there to get extra cards though.  There are hundreds of cards to keep you collecting for a long time though.  The player’s General, comes in the form of one of six different classes. Each of the classes has a significant level of variety in the way you play through different abilities and deck archetypes.

 

Duelyst’s visual style is just gorgeous. A wonderful, colourful retro feel. The background location look remind me very much of Bastion. The sprite models are again, a really simplistic style, pixelated, but pixelated with care and passion. One of my favourite looking games to come out in 2016 so far if I am completely honest. There isn’t much to talk about in terms of character animations, as they are all pretty much 2D.

 

The game’s tutorial system is excellently put together, you find yourself being able to complete the tutorial in a matter of minutes and after completion, you have pretty much learnt all there is to know. It is just down to you to put your tactful mind to use and master the system. I really liked the solo challenge mode which gives you a certain target and an allotted amount of turns to do it in.  This almost always turns out to be a sort of puzzle game, but it is a nice additional game mode when you want to try something different to the core game mode. That core game mode is the ranked ladder. This is the PVP mode where you take on other opponents across the world. Finding a match only takes a matter of seconds, and you can work your way up the ladder within an evening’s worth of progression.

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