Deus Ex: Human Revolution Directors Cut edition review

Deus Ex is set in a future where people enhance themselves with body augmentations. They range from  uses like prosthetic limbs to weapons or to use as we would use our smartphones currently, however there is a group of radicals who believe in not modifying the human body who try to stop it. You play as Adam Jensen, an ex swat member who was hired as head security of Sariff corporations the very company to invent and introduce these modifications. After a terrorist attack Adam is almost killed, on the brink of death doctors save him by loading him full of these augmentations.

Throughout the game your actions gain you xp points, these points along with upgrade cards can be spent to improve the augmentations Adam has. These upgrades are mostly the usual ones like more inventory or health while other ones (like punching through light walls) gave interesting opportunities to me as a player. The game mainly plays in a first person format with a third person cover system (the camera pans from the characters point of view to slightly behind them while they take cover behind objects). The guns are unique looking in appearance with most looking futuristic and sleek others looked like they hadn't changed with age in this games depiction of the future. The shooting feels nice but the enemy artificial intelligence leaves much to be desired. All they seem to be able to do is look at you, shoot and move left to right a little. (I didn't get that far into the game yet so this may just be the easier ai at play.

Deus Ex: HR seemed really fun from what short amount I played and I look forward to beating it, even though its almost 4 years old this game holds up very well.

here is a link to my youtube with a short gameplay clip uploaded

How the most popular genres of video games are ruining them.

A few years ago in 2009 a game called Just Cause 2 was released and was considered one of the first major open world sandbox game successes along with another more familiar game Minecraft. In 1996 Resident Evil was released and praised as an amazing and unique survival horror game, now browsing steam it seems like every other game is a survival horror game and every other survival horror is one with zombies in it. These genres and a few others (first and third person shooters free-to-play etc).

The reason why every developer who just finished watching some YouTube tutorials usually chooses games of these genres is caused by how easy it is to crap out a horribly basic shooter and how it's equally as easy to get published and charge five to ten dollars for something that would maybe be considered good, if it were an iphone game.

Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes PC edition review

(text in this font is my personal experience playing this game for the first time.)
The game enthusiasts among you are probably very aware of this series but for those who aren't here is a little background info. Metal Gear Solid is a stealth espionage action (with heavy dose of third person shooter thrown in) game series created by Hideo Kojima. It follows the"perfect soldier" in some games and his clone (this is not the sci-fi cloning it's more realistically based) in others. Here's a link to the wikipedia if you want to try and understand the series intricate plot

Ground Zeroes is more or less a glorified demo that sets the stage for mgsv: the phantom pain which will release later this year, now this doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad game. With a far less outrageous price tag than the console version of the game did on release it's far more justifiable buying this game that can easily be finished in around an hour... but shouldn't be played that way. I as many others did learned through trial and error that metal gear solid was a game that got more fun the more time you spent carefully planning out your mission as you pick what entrance you want to take where you go from there and if there are any points of interest you could explore on the way (that building could be useless but it could just as easily contain some much needed firepower or a suppressor to replace the one you just wore out) and ground zeroes does it perfectly.

My mission: to extract two hostages being held in a U.S. marine base. I enter the base scanning the environment, quickly marking the closest enemies before finding a spot to hide in some bushes behind some crates. I then pull up my map look for a vantage point, mark it out and head over to it. once there I do a more comprehensive search of the compound making note of the prison on the other side and the small army of marines patrolling the base between me and it. 

what would ensue for the next few hours was one of my favorite gaming experiences so far. Incredibly well programmed artificial intelligence stopped this mission from being a cakewalk by having marines comprehensibly searching areas where I'd been spotted and by making good use of tactics, cover and weaponry at their disposal up until the literal last moments of gameplay.

I thought it was all over as I loaded the last hostage and myself onto the helicopter I called in. The alarms were blaring but the soldiers were searching for me in area I had left a while ago, as we lifted off I felt a sense of pride in completing the mission... or at least I thought I had. Off in the distance I can see another helicopter approaching, fast, my pilot tells me that the chopper isn't friendly and needs to be taken out, A simple task if I weren't carrying only low caliber weapons. The Helicopter fires a few rounds as it approaches missing us by only a little bit, My mind races as I try to figure out a way take out this threat. As the helicopter closes in a sudden stroke of genius hits me and I ready my rifle to take what has to be some very precise shots. I pull the trigger and send a stream of bullets straight through the enemy copters windshield and right through the skull of the pilot. The doors slowly close as I watch the helicopter spiral towards the ground and then go up in fireball that was once my enemy, bringing my mission full circle.

Another cut-scene later and I found myself back at the main menu with host of new missions  (all on the same military base map) unlocked that range from assassinating high value targets all the way to fighting body snatching aliens. 

Having previously seen the game in action I was pleasantly surprised to find that the game ran at a constant smooth sixty frames per second on mixed medium/high quality settings on my starting to become dated (a.k.a. 3+ year old technology) laptop which shows a lot of effort went in to the optimization and the entire game in general.

Despite only having about a days worth of base content MGSV: Ground Zeroes has impressed and entertained me far more than a lot of games with about five times the content and is another great installment in the series that can be enjoyed by returning fans or potential new ones

Rogue Legacy Review

Rogue Legacy is an indie game developed by Cellar Door Games published June 27th, 2013. The game has "rougue-like" elements in it (a rouge element in video games usually means that when a character dies there's no way to bring them back.)

In Rogue Legacy you get to play as the great knight of the land... until they die, leaving the task to their heir. The Heir is the one of three you select each with positive and negative traits (because nobody is perfect!) such as ADHD (you move faster), Vertigo (the game is upside down), and even Alektrophobia the fear of chickens (sometimes a chicken will appear occasionally instead of a health item). Altogether the game has many more traits than this and randomly combines a few of them for a varied experience in playing every time.

Each time the player dies and choose a new heir they can purchase upgrades and new classes to play as with each purchase adding a new section onto their castle, then they can use whatever money they saved to purchase items like new armor and swords or enchantments that give the player bonuses like a double jump or finding more money from various people outside where you enter the actual game. Unfortunately before you can proceed into the game Charon the gatekeeper (in a nice reference to Greek mythology) demands the rest of whatever money you spent.

The actual game takes place in a randomly generated castle that changes each time the player goes in as a new heir. The game has 4 bosses for the 4 different environments in the castle that can be defeated in any order but due to how the game plays out are usually fought in a specific order.

The enemies in the game are easy to fight alone but grouped together they become quite a challenge. The enemies vary from skeletons and evil spirits to poison spitting plants but the variation unfortunately mostly ends there as many of the enemies have similar attacks and behavior patterns so the combat formula never strays off the beaten path (this could be viewed as a pro rather then a con to some though)

Rogue Legacy is a really fun light-hearted platformer that shows Cellar Door Games really has potential to become a major developer as long as they keep making games like this!

I'll upload my own gameplay at a later date but i'm currently bogged down with a lot of work and don't have the time

Metro 2033 Redux review

Recently 4A games and Deep silver remade their cult classic post apocalyptic shooter, Metro 2033. This remakes biggest selling point was that the developers had completely re made the game from the ground up instead of just converting the old engine, this allows for a better looking game that also performs better on lower power systems. The last light engine allowed new features to be implemented into the game, things like the weapon customization and different play style modes (one more action oriented with standard shooter combat, and the other a more realist style with limited resources and an emphasis on staying hidden and taking out enemies in the shadows.)

They did a very good job keeping the original games ominous atmosphere and even intensify it with the improved graphics and audio (I am personally a big fan of the lighting effects this engine has.) which will still give you that "I've found a very special game" feeling every time you play. As is always important in shooters the guns in Metro 2033 redux are exceptionally nice feeling, Revolvers have a slight delay while the cylinder rotates, smg's sound snappy but don't handle like they're made of paper, shotguns pack such a punch you can almost swear you felt recoil when you fired it, assault rifles feel naturally balanced between power and control and finally sniper rifles look intimidating and sound even more so with each shot ringing out full seconds after firing it.

The new engine included an improved ai system, upon my short time playing a bit of both the new and old version of 2033, I  noticed myself having to think more tactically as my enemies now swapped cover and worked together to flank me.

Payday 2 2nd annual Christmas event

As the final month of the year rolls around so does another thing, holiday themed game events. A commonplace in payday 2 seasonal events offer players a chance to play a special holiday themed heist, which also unusually rewards the player with a limited time mask only obtainable through the heist.

This years Christmas heist is a particularly interesting one. You are tasked with rescuing Vlad's (a criminally insane contact in the game) alcoholic brother in law from his downed plane and rescue as much of the cocaine he was transporting before the cops get a hold on it. The heist takes place at a logging mill and the evidence of a plane crash is evident, burning fuselage litters the map standing out bright orange from the dark greens and browns of the trees creating a setting that looks straight out of an action movie. The layout of the map is very interesting with multiple viable strategies from holing up in the logging warehouse in a "king of the hill" way, or if your team is fairly fast the trees and rock piles provide ample cover to dodge between. The mission starts with you having to escort the drunk pilot to a safe location and signal the escape chopper before the cops show up, after that it's simply holding off the police while simultaneously trying to recover the scattered boxes of coke in the forest.

Along with the heist this years event came with 4 user designed Christmas masks themed after things like the Grinch and the homicidal robot Santa from the popular show Futurama, and if everyone on your team are all wearing different holiday masks and you play the heist on the hardest difficulty you can search find a special mask or rather beard that's modeled after the producer of the games beard. Everyone was also immediately given a new weapon in the form of the iconic Chicago typewriter tommy gun (think 1940's-1950's era mafia). The gun is fairly decent with medium damage and accuracy and a very large ammo capacity, to balance this the gun has awful stability making very difficult to provide sustained fire unless stability improving modifications are added to the gun.

This years update was definitely a fun one with lots of good new content added and even came paired a long with a payday themed version of "12 days of Christmas" which you can listen to here.

Medal of Honor: Warfighter multiplayer review

Medal of Honor Warfighter is a first person shooter developed by Danger Close and published by Electronic Arts. Warfighter is the most recent installment of the Medal of Honor series and has been overlooked by many as another generic shooter with a few neat gimmicks.

Warfighter has a multiplayer mode that on the surface seems fairly basic but once you get into it shows all of its colors. The most intriguing part of the multiplayer is the fireteam buddy system, this pairs two players of the same team together and encourages you to work with one another by allowing you to respawn on your buddy, replenish your health and ammo and when your buddy scores points around you, you also get a small bonus. In order to help keep you with your buddy the game constantly shows you their silhouette (which can be a life saver in some situations) and also silhouettes the person who kills them allowing you to "avenge" your buddy, if you can kill the enemy player before the silhouette disappears your buddy gets a reduced respawn time.

Now moving on to the player and their weapons. The first thing I need to say about warfighters guns are that they look, sound and handle amazingly. The guns are all based off real world variants that the different nationalities use. The customization is fairly in depth allowing you to change the length of the guns barrel, the flash hider used and the orientation of the weapons stock allowing for a numerous variations of the same gun that perform uniquely. The game lets you start off picking any soldier from any weapon class and then changes the order in which soldiers and weapons unlock for you based on who you choose. The soldier classes are the assaulter (uses highly adaptable assault rifles), Demolitions (heavily armored and uses short range high caliber carbines), Point man (uses assault rifles similar to the assaulter but moves faster and has flash-bang grenades instead of lethal grenades), Heavy Gunner (uses light machine guns to provide suppression), Special Ops (very similar to point man but geared more towards short range conflicts), and the sniper (not much to say about them they use sniper rifles and designated marksmen rifles to fight from a distance).

The multiplayer mode has your generic modes like team death match and capture the flag but has an interesting mode called hot spot. Hot spot has one team try to defend one of five bomb caches at a time while the other team tries to destroy it, the catch is that the defending team knows where the next bomb cache will be before the attackers do allowing them to setup a defensive position.

Warfighter is a great game that was overlooked by many due to bad review at launch because of un-addressed launch bugs. While there are still a few active servers (around 2 to 3 full servers on weekdays and around 5 on the weekend) it could be more lively. The game is pretty fun to play and if you can find it for cheap i'd recommend getting it.