Vrrroooommmm!!!

Another week that means it’s time for another review. First of all you may have noticed the update to the banner at the top of the page. This drawing of me was done by a brilliant artist and good friend of mine, Andrew James Murphy. If you would like to see some more of his work check out his DeviantART page here: DeviantART

 

So what have I been playing this week well I think I’ll leave Maverick to tell ya that one....

Oh yes Need for Speed Hot Pursuit a reboot of the original Hot Pursuit series which was released in 2002 has now been remade by the masterminds at Criterion games, the same people behind the amazing Burnout franchise.

Now then bit of clarification before I dive into the review. In my opinion Need for Speed Most Wanted is one of the greatest racing games of all time, followed closely by Wipeout. Now I know your all screaming ‘Ash but what about Gran Turismo, surely that’s the greatest racing game ever made??’ and on some parts I agree. Yes Gran Turismo is an amazing accomplishment; each one has pushed the graphical limitations of its host console and bought some of the most realistic racing to the home screen. However Gran Turismo is not game.....hold on and hear me out. Although GT contains a lot of game elements win races, get money, upgrade cars I think it has grown to be something more than that. It is no longer simply a game and rather one of the cheapest, real world driving simulators money can buy. I would put Gran Turismo in a class with Flight Simulators, it has far surpassed a mere child’s play thing and I feel could be used as a learning tool for the thousands of people who are learning the mechanics of driving.

Anyway going slightly off topic lets reign things back in. NFS Most Wanted, released in 2005 and created by EA, was a stellar game it combined the best parts of the original ‘Hot Pursuit’ series and the newer street racing NFS variant ‘Underground’. It gave players the freedom to race in an open world with a vast array of cars that they could customise to suit not only their driving style but aesthetic taste as well. Included was the ‘pursuit’ mode where players would be persistently chased by police forces until they either escaped or were run off the road. All these elements created a game that was both engaging and extremely rewarding.

So can the new NFS Hot Pursuit possibly live up to the high standards that Most Wanted lay down all those years ago?

Cops n Robbers

Criterion went back to the drawing board with this one and stripped away all the unnecessary elements found in the recent NFS games. No more modifying cars, no more down lights and body kits, just pure unadulterated street racing with some of the most amazing cars available today. At first glance I thought that this design option would deter from the game. I enjoyed the fact I could make the cars my own and not have simple stock versions of each car, however after playing I found myself so enthralled by the fact that the cars are just so much fun to race that I didn’t miss this feature as much as I thought I would.

Rather than having an open world style game like Most Wanted, Hot Pursuit plays out each race as separate events but on a large scale map allowing the player to choose the location of each event and which roads they wish to race down, and when I say a large map I mean LARGE. The racing environment is a gorgeous place to behold, ranging from vast deserts, high alpine mountain roads to urban highways that stretch for miles. Sea Crest County is an extremely picturesque place.

Players also have the option to Free Drive around the map in unlocked cars however they will not meet any specific objectives while in this mode. There are two tiers to work through Cop or Racer. You select an event from either category and earn upgrades for each race won. As the player progresses they unlock more powerful cars and weapon upgrades to use in the ‘Hot Pursuit’ races.

Racers

As the name states you have one very simple objective. Win the race at all costs. To help you do this certain events will give you access to specialised weapons to help deter the police force of Sea Crest County. The player will be able to utilise spike strips, EMP’s, turbo boost and radio jammers to help them get to the front of the pack and stay one step ahead of the law.

Cops

Aside from the obvious putting a stop to illegal street racing, cops will also be tasked with ‘Rapid Response’ races. These are essentially the moments where an officer will receive a call and must get to the destination as quickly as possible. Cops also have access to spike strips and EMP’s however their other two weapons are different as they have access to road blocks and helicopters to help squash any racers unfortunate enough to pass them.

All of the 66 cars available at launch have been equipped with a nitrous boost tank which can be filled by performing daring feats such as driving into oncoming traffic, drifting round corners and near collision misses. Thanks to the use of some of the techniques found in the Burnout series the core game play is extremely accessible and walks that fine line between arcade racing and simulation that the Criterion team are able to replicate so well. The sense of speed in this game is phenomenal more than once I have found myself applying the brakes simply because my brain was telling me that I was moving too fast, of course it sadly cost me the race, but it is defiantly something that needs to be experienced.

Of course as with all games of this day and age there is an online mode allowing up to 8 racers to go either head to head in an all out race or split them into teams of Cops and Racers to see who can make it to the finish line before being taken out and who can bust the most racers.

You got Facebook in my NFS

Another great feature of Hot Pursuit is the new Autolog system. This is a social networking tool implemented into the game allowing all your times and races to be seamlessly compared to that of your friends. If a friend then beats your time the Autolog will send you a notification of who beat you and how badly they beat you as well. You are then given the option to try to retake your place as leader in the event. Autolog also allows you to take in game screen shots using the ‘Photo Mode’ and upload images to friends to show off the new Lamborghini you unlocked.

Image taken from my game.

Driving off into the sunset

With so many racing games out there it is certainly hard to make a name for yourself especially with the recent and coveted release of Gran Turismo 5. However Need for Speed Hot Pursuit has hit all the right buttons. Creating a game that is visually stunning and engrossingly fun to play you will find yourself spending hours in Sea Crest just driving around in your Bugatti Veyron taking in the sights as you hurtle down the road at over 200mph.

I am pleased to say that I think EA have FINALLY hit the nail on the head and found the successor to NFS Most Wanted in this game after the shambles that were Carbon, Shift and Undercover.

I’m going to give Hot Pursuit 9 out of 10.

To put it simply if you want a racing game that is fun, challenging and contains some of the most powerful cars in the world, then you can’t go wrong with Need for Speed Hot Pursuit.

Thanks for reading this week people. If you have any suggestions or ideas for new blog posts then please let me know.

As always please comment, subscribe and share with friends. I'd love to hear back from you and hear your opinions. See ya next time.

Call of Duty: Black Ops

First off let me apologise for not having any updates over the past couple of weeks. My internet connection went down so it took me a while to get a new one installed. Anyway, I’m back now and with a review for the game that’s been on everyone’s minds.

That’s right, it’s that time of year again and the almighty Call of Duty franchise has released its latest creation on the world. As many of you will already be aware Call of Duty Black Ops is the 7^th instalment of series to hit the current generation of consoles, this time Treyarch are at the helm of development. After the mixed feelings for Modern Warfare 2 could Treyarch pull the fans back in with their newly revised multiplayer and critically acclaimed Zombie mode?

Solo

I won’t go into too much detail of the story as I know some people may not have finished the game so I will just briefly go over my experiences with it.

The single player portion of Black Ops has you taking the role of Alex Mason, voiced by Sam Worthington of Avatar and Terminator Salvation fame. Mason awakes in a mysterious torture chamber where he is persistently questioned by a masked voice about a series of numbers. Unfortunately Mason is suffering from amnesia and is unable to recall what the numbers mean. Most of the missions in the single player campaign play out as flashbacks from Mason’s point of view while he struggles to piece back together the memories that he has lost.

This design choice has allowed the developers to create segmented missions in a wide variety of locations to give the game is grandiose scale. However when playing through the campaign I felt that due to this layout you are constantly breaking the connection with the characters that you meet on each mission, and as only a few of them will appear throughout the entire story this disconnection is only detrimental to the players involvement with the game.  It felt that just as you were learning something interesting about a character in one of the flashbacks the game would yank you back to the present never giving you the time to form a bond with any of the other integral characters.

Overall the game runs in at about the 7-8 hour mark depending on how skilled you are at first person shooters. One word of advice to players though, if you are with a squad use them to your advantage. Running out of cover all guns blazing will NOT work on higher difficulty levels.

Multiplayer

Now then onto the elephant in the room, the online portion of Black Ops. After the mass outcry from the fans regarding the glitches, cheats and game breaking perks from Modern Warfare 2, Treyarch set out to fix many of the problems whilst still retaining the fast frantic game play that we have all come to know and love from the franchise.

You are still able to level up your online avatar and unlock new weapons, perks and equipment, however all these are no longer linked to the levelling mechanic. Instead there is now a monetary system in place called CoD points. As you play games online you earn CoD points which you can then spend on the items that you have unlocked that you wish to use. Meaning if you don’t want a grenade launcher on your AUG then you simply don’t buy it. This is great as it allows players full control over whatever items they wish to use and gets rid of the need to go through unnecessary challenges just so you can unlock that ACOG scope that you so desperately want.

Another improvement was to get rid of game breaking perks like Stopping Power and Juggernaut. These 2 perks overruled nearly every configuration in Modern Warfare 2 making the online game unplayable unless you used them.

Of course Black Ops still has its fair share of problems, Grenade launchers (noob tubes) and Last Stand are still present in the game and are still as annoying as ever, however I have not ran into them nearly as often as I did whilst playing MW2.  Quick scoping as also been nerfed by forcing players to come to a standstill and delaying the held breath by a few milliseconds to stop people running around the maps with over powered sniper rifles and getting quicker and more accurate shots at close range than a SMG. Drop shots have also been fixed with a new simple dive animation. If a player is sprinting and then presses the button to go prone, rather than simply dropping to the floor the avatar will now perform a Matrix style dive to the ground before readying his weapon.

Now to the main problem with Black Ops online.....the spawn points. These are the areas that you appear into on a map when the game begins or just after you die. The problem with the spawn points in Black Ops is that they are used far too close together. Throughout many of the games I have played too many times I have spawned into a match and then been shot in the back by another enemy who just happens to spawn directly behind me. THIS SHOULD NOT BE HAPPENING!!

I understand that it needs hundreds of hours of testing to get things like spawn areas correct and I can only hope that Treyarch are working on a fix as we speak but for now this element truly breaks the online gaming experience. I will say in its favour it doesn’t happen ALL the time but it does happen FAR too often.

So is the online game play better than MW2?.........If Treyarch is able to fix the broken spawn points and tweak a few of the guns power then yes, Black Ops online is better than Modern Warfare 2. Due to its high level of customisation its varied game types and the ability to save your game play movies to share with friends. Then yes I would have to fall on the side of preferring Black Ops.

Zombie Mode

Finally but by no means least the amazing Zombie Mode from World at War has returned. This game mode can be played solo or online co-op with up to 3 friends and is by far the greatest part of Black Ops. Trying to survive an endless wave of the groaning undead is always entertaining. Throw in the fact that you can now do so as a former president of the United States and you’re in for some fun times. One of the greatest moments I have experienced in Black Ops was while I was playing Zombie mode with friends. We had barricaded ourselves at the bottom of some stairs with a zombie horde slowly making its way down to us. We decided that one of us should stand at the bottom of the stair case and fire up to take down as many as we could. As he hit the prone button his character dived head first into a rampant pack of zombies and was instantly killed. Due to the laughter that ensued from the rest of us we didn’t survive for very long after that.

Overall Black Ops has its fair share of problems but it does have some redeeming features. Now I know that nothing that I say will really sway you as you will have already made up your mind whether or not you will be purchasing this game, but for what it’s worth Black Ops is an enjoyable first person shooter. The online portion will gain some longevity thanks to its huge fan base, and Zombie mode is simply a MUST for anyone’s game collection.

Due to the fact that there is so much crammed into the Black Ops disc I have to give this game 8.5 out of 10. (If Treyarch fix the spawn points I’ll bump it to a 9)

Right that’s your lot for this week, hope you enjoyed the read and I shall be back next week with more gaming news to keep you satisfied.

As always please comment, subscribe and share with friends. I'd love to hear back from you and hear your opinions. See ya next time.

Enslaved Odyssey To The West.

Review time, I thought I would switch things up a little this week and rather than give you all a recap of the news I would put my thoughts to you about the game I have been currently playing.

The game in question is Enslaved Odyssey to the West. 

Plot

Created by developers Ninja Theory, the minds behind Heavenly Sword and the upcoming reboot of Devil May Cry, comes the tale of Monkey and Trip. 2 survivors who escape a slave ship bound for the mysterious location known only as Pyramid. Set in the distant future in a land that has been ravaged by war, where only scrap metal robots known as mechs and small pockets of humanity are able to survive. These 2 companions must work together if they are to overcome the crumbling dystopia and get back to their homes. Along the way they meet with a friend of Trip’s called Pigsy who joins them in their adventure.

The story is loosely based on the ancient Chinese novel ‘Journey to the West’ and was written by Alex Garland. Who notably also wrote the films 28 Days Later, Sunshine and The Beach. Returning to work with Ninja Theory was Andy Serkis, who not only directed the game he also performed the motion capture for Monkey.

Game play

As this game is an action adventure there are 2 core game play elements to Enslaved, these are combat and platforming. Both of which you will be doing a lot of on your play through of the game. You will take control of Monkey for the entirety of the story and Trip will accompany you as more of an advisor and at times a useful resource due to the baby sitting parts of the game play but I shall get onto that later.

The combat mechanics in Enslaved are very simple; there are no huge button combinations to remember and most enemies can be taken down with a few mashes of the strong attack. Add to this Monkey’s ranged and stun attacks and you will be dispatching a mountain of mechs in no time. I found the combat to be fluid and engaging for the most part, the only downfall as with many games in this genre was the camera. It would fixate itself on the most imminent danger, which is useful at times, however if you then try to move it with the right analogue stick to get a better view on the enemies that are circling around you it will constantly try to snap back to where it thinks you should be looking. This caused a to and fro argument between me and the control scheme with me telling it where I wanted to look and it telling me where I should be looking. Personally I think games like this require the player to have complete control over the camera allowing them to pick and choose which enemies to focus on and not have the game dictate or overrule the player’s choice.

Now to a much more enjoyable part of the game....the platforming. Anyone who has played the Uncharted games will be immediately comfortable and at home with how Monkey can move around his environment. Leaping huge gaps and finding hand holds on the tiniest of ledges, Monkey is able to scale complex structures with ease. The game will highlight each area that the player will need to move to next and Monkey will grab onto it with an almost magnetic grip. It is near impossible for the player to be killed whilst climbing and this works as a strength for the user. I have played many games in my time where jumps have been misjudged or invisible walls have been in areas that look to be reachable but turn out to be deadly. The fact that the game compensates for this is a satisfying experience and allows you to enjoy the sights and not have to become angered or agitated by unresponsive controls or deceiving level design. 

I kind of have a love hate relationship with babysitting mechanics in games. At times the AI can be perfect and will be able to fend for itself while you take on some of the harder enemies in a game, and then there are times where the AI will blindly run in to all sorts of danger and then demand that you save them. Luckily Enslaved is not the latter. As stated before you play as Monkey and you are burdened with the task to look out for Trip, fortunately she has a number of skills to aid you in your quest together. Early on in the game Trip will hack a robotic dragon fly and use it to survey the path ahead. This information will then be displayed to Monkey showing hidden mines, active mechs and other dangers in the vicinity. 

She is also able to point out mechs that have special attachments that Monkey can tear off and utilise for himself. When both Trip and Monkey are caught in a difficult position and are being hailed with gun fire, Trip is able to perform a distraction that will cause the mechs to shift target and allow Monkey to sneak in for the kill. Without a doubt this one of the better companion AI’s I have seen in games.

Graphics

Enslaved was built in the Unreal engine and as such has the classic Unreal feel to it and apart from a few slow loading textures and graphical glitches the games artwork is engrossingly beautiful. The environments that you will get to explore are particularly noteworthy ranging from huge American cities that have been overrun with vegetation and colourful organic life to vast scrap metal junk yards of old decaying mechs. The character models in the game complement their personality; Monkey has a huge upper body figure that strongly resembles that of a gorilla his scars show he is a battle hardened man just trying to survive in the wilderness. Trip is lean and nimble and in comparison to Monkey it is clear to see she is in need of care and then Pigsy.....well what can you say, he is a pig. 

The mech character models are a steam punk’s wet dream. They comprise of lots of moving parts to form bipedal robot. The latter enemies are simply breathtaking but I won’t go into detail as it is best you experience it for yourself. 

Final thoughts

Overall Enslaved is a thoroughly enjoyable game. The simplistic game play design never deters from the story allowing you to become involved with the characters and form a connection with the 2 main protagonists. Aside from the slight issues with the camera controls and loading times with the Unreal engine, the game, in my eyes, is a definite purchase. If you want a game that has a well written story, stunningly beautiful set pieces and some superb characters and voice acting then Enslaved is the game for you.

I’ll give Enslaved an 8 out of 10.

Thanks for reading this week folks. As always please comment, subscribe and share with friends. I'd love to hear back from you and hear your opinions. See ya next time.