Open World

Better Late Than DEAD Review for PC

This game was reviewed using a code sent by the developer/publisher.

Better Late Than DEAD is a survival adventure game developed by Odin Game Studios, being published on Steam in July of 2015 on Early Access.

As we have come all too familiar with the survival genre of games; you start off as a single character, dropped in the middle of nowhere and you are expected to survive. Games of this genre are often a hit from the start or just flop straight away. Unfortunately Better Late Than DEAD does not have a very bright future in my eyes.

Gameplay is…well, almost none existent. I started out in the ocean and had to swim at least five minutes before I got to any sort of land. I spent almost an hour exploring the island, finding a couple of houses, and that is it. Whilst exploring the houses I found that each of them had their own loot, strangely enough, the houses were all an exact copy of each other and the loot was spawned in exactly the same place. The loot that I found were again, everything you would expect to find in this type of game, cans of food, bandages, knives, etc. As far as game play goes, that is it. There is absolutely nothing else to do in this game; I didn’t find any animals, enemies, nothing.

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The graphics are bad to say the least; the screenshots really shows the game in a different light to how it actually looks in real time. Awfully low quality textures on almost everything, the water certainly doesn’t look like how it does in the screenshots, and neither does the skybox. On top of the poor graphics, the animation side of the game is horrible; your character has just an awful run cycle that looks like some sort of jelly man was used to rig it – also this game features possibly one of the highest jumping ability I have ever seen in a game, I swear I was jumping up entire flights of stairs in one go… It should also be known, that from jumping, I managed to break my leg in the game twice and die from it once – lord knows how.

At the beginning of the game, I was presented with a cut scene that sets up for a quite interesting story; but that is it. After that intro, I found no other plot elements, or anything. I was particularly disappointed as I would have really liked to have seen more of it. Hopefully the developers will be adding something in via patches in the future on this aspect.

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Better Late Than DEAD also has some audio problems. Whilst playing the game, you will have the same repetitive soundtrack playing in the background, and when it loops, boy do you notice it. There is an obvious cut in the track, and it just starts playing again; this for me seemed like a really basic issue which should not be seen in the game, it really ruined the game’s immersion (the little it actually had).

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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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